Paris (AFP)
The government will "deploy a plan to fight against fraud" to state medical aid (AME), including including the exploitation by the social security of the tourist visa file, said Agnès Buzyn Monday.
"The AME and urgent care should not be misguided," said the Minister of Health during the debate on immigration to the National Assembly, promising to "strengthen controls" before and after the award of this help to foreigners in an irregular situation.
The budget of the AME amounted to 848 million euros in 2018. The same year, the social security has detected about sixty fraudulent cases for an amount of 542,000 euros.
"By the end of the year, the health insurance funds will have access to the base + Visabio + of the Ministry of the Interior" and will thus be able "to identify the applicants concealing a visa and having therefore no vocation to profit from the MEA or urgent care, "said Buzyn.
She also said that the project "regrouping MEA requests in three caisses" (Paris, Bobigny, Marseille) "will better control them".
Dismissing in advance "any solution based on a financial participation of persons admitted to the MEA", the Minister did not however exclude "to put under prior agreement (health insurance, ed) some care that can be subject fraud or trafficking ".
An option that will depend on the mission entrusted this summer to the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) and Finance (IGF), whose conclusions are expected "at the end of this month".
Likewise, for asylum seekers' access to basic health insurance (PUMa) and free complementary health insurance (CMU-C), "a waiting period, during which we would obviously take charge of urgent care, could conceive, "she said, recalling that such a period" already exists for the French who return from abroad without professional activity ".
© 2019 AFP