2024-10-10 19:01:00
The Social Security financing bill plans to lower the ceiling for compensation for sick leave, postpone the increase in pensions and reform reductions in employer contributions.
Published on 10/10/2024 9:01 p.m.
Reading time: 3 min The Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, at the Ministry of the Economy to present the Social Security financing bill for 2025, October 10, 2024. (ALAIN JOCARD / AFP)
Constrained budget, savings measures, coverage of medical consultations… The government presented its bill for financing Social Security to the Council of Ministers on Thursday October 10. The text targets a Social Security deficit reduced to 16 billion euros in 2025, after 18 billion euros in 2024.
The bill plans in particular to contain the increase in health spending to 2.8%. This objective requires health insurance to make around 4 billion euros in savings compared to the natural evolution of its expenses. “It’s a necessary brake” to ensure the sustainability of the social protection model but “reasonable”estimates the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin. Here is what the text provides.
Medical consultations less reimbursed by health insurance
Among the savings to be made, the government wants health insurance to reimburse less for medical consultations, and complementary health insurance to do so more. Overall, the share of Health Insurance would drop to 60% compared to 70% currently, but the modalities remain to be defined depending on the types of consultations. In any case, the government expects one billion euros from this measure.
A reduction in the ceiling for sick leave compensation
To reduce expenses linked to sick leave by 600 million euros, the executive intends to lower the reimbursement ceiling. Health insurance will still pay, from the fourth day of stopping, compensation equivalent to 50% of the daily salary, but within the limit of a ceiling of 1.4 SMIC, compared to 1.8 previously. The remainder is often compensated by companies, but some French people will have to put their hands in their pockets. The date of entry into force is not known.
A postponement of the revaluation of pensions
To save 3.8 billion euros, the government will postpone by six months, to July 1, the revaluation of pensions, indexed to inflation, which usually occurs in January.
Farmers will begin to benefit, from 2026, from a pension aligned with the general system, taking into account the best 25 years of income. But for technical reasons, the reform voted at the beginning of 2023, and which was still awaiting its application, cannot really be implemented in a manner “operational” than in 2028.
Measures to mitigate “low-wage traps”
The PLFSS 2025 is a “first stage of overhaul of social security contribution reductions”, today concentrated at the level of the minimum wage, in order to mitigate “the low-wage trap phenomenon”which means that the system of reductions in employer contributions, in its current state, does not sufficiently encourage companies to increase low wages. According to the government, to give “enough visibility for businesses, this structural reform will be carried out in two stages”, in 2025 and 2026.
It plans to increase employer contributions between 1 and 1.3 minimum wage by two percentage points in 2025, then by two additional points in 2026. These contributions will, however, fall for salaries between 1.3 and 1.8 minimum wage and will increase again. beyond. This reform should bring 4 billion euros to Social Security.
Negotiations to lower prices for medical imaging and biological analyzes
The text plans to initiate new negotiations with representatives of radiologists and medical analysis laboratories to lower the prices of medical imaging and biological analyses. In the absence of agreement within a certain period, or in the event of non-compliance with the agreement, the law will authorize the competent authorities to proceed “unilaterally” to declines.
Furthermore, to prescribe certain medical biology analyses, medical imaging or patient health transport vouchers, the list of which will be defined by decree, the prescriber must complete a form allowing Health Insurance to evaluate the “pertinence”. The bill also modifies the terms of conventional negotiations between approved taxis and Health Insurance, so as to be able to better regulate price increases.
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