“The AME does not constitute an incentive factor for immigration to our country. » Restricting or eliminating state medical aid (AME) for undocumented immigrants would have “unacceptable health, human, social and economic consequences”, eight former Ministers of Health worried on Thursday, in a platform in the World.
“Weakening the AME means exposing our health system to increased pressure from later and therefore more serious and costly treatment,” warn these personalities from different political parties, mainly from the central bloc.
Aurélien Rousseau, Roselyne Bachelot, François Braun, Agnès Buzyn, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Marisol Touraine, Frédéric Valletoux and Olivier Véran are the signatories of this column, published while several ministers of the Barnier government, first and foremost the tenant of Beauvau Bruno Retailleau (LR), have positioned themselves for a transformation of the AME into “emergency medical aid”, with drastically reduced contours.
“A fantasy contrary to the facts”
“The AME does not constitute an incentive for immigration to our country, which would be at the expense of the French. It is a fantasy contrary to the facts,” insist the co-signatories, ensuring that the system is already limited to “a precise scope of care”. “Touching state medical aid goes against the very logic of the public health policies that we have put in place,” they add.
The AME guarantees foreigners in an irregular situation free medical care under two conditions: illegal residence continues in France for more than three months and resources below a ceiling of 10,166 euros per year (i.e. 847 euros per month ). In 2024, the AME envelope planned by the State stands at 1.2 billion euros, or approximately 0.5% of the health expenditure planned by the Social Security budget (PLFSS). At the end of 2023, there were 466,000 AME beneficiaries.
It concerns medical and dental care, reimbursed medications, analysis and hospitalization costs, as well as those relating to certain vaccinations and certain screenings, contraception and abortion.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau suggested this week that he was “not refraining from taking, particularly through regulations, a certain number of measures” on the subject often brandished as a red line by the presidential camp.
