Their final report will be made public in October. But two parliamentarians, Senator UDI Nathalie Goulet and MP LREM Carole Grandjean, unveiled Tuesday several shock proposals to fight against social benefits fraud. Including the fraud consisting, for people no longer residing in France, to continue to use their life card for reimbursement of care. The two parliamentarians propose to limit to two years the validity period of the Vitale cards.
In their pre-report, the two parliamentarians rely on a figure transmitted by INSEE: 84 million people are now listed in the French social system as being "alive" or "deemed alive". 84 million people eligible for social benefits while France has only 67 million inhabitants. For Nathalie Goulet and Carole Grandjean, behind this gap, there are inevitably people who are no longer in France, but who have kept their Vitale card. And it is there, they say, that is the source of a potential fraud that they refuse for the moment to quantify. A fraud, for example, which is to be reimbursed for care by the Social Security while living abroad.
The National Health Insurance Fund conducts annual campaigns to monitor the situation of its insured persons
Contacted by Europe 1, Nathalie Goulet gives an example of this fraud: "When you are an Erasmus student, you have to a Vitale card, it's normal.When you return to your country, you can very well pass the card to A friend, and if you do not prevent the services, your card remains active, we are on the declarative so it is really that we make the clear ". Hence the shock recommendation of the two parliamentarians: limit to two years the validity period of the Vitale cards, and provide for their renewal under conditions.
In an update released Tuesday afternoon, the National Fund for Medicare says it conducts campaigns every year to monitor the situation of its insured for which it does not have recent information on the place of residence. And when it comes to the conclusion that an insured no longer lives in France, she systematically closes her rights. Between January 2018 and March 2019, this was the case, says the CNAM, for 130,000 people.