How to relieve emergency room congestion and find the right price for hospitalization costs with out-of-pocket expenses that are sometimes too high?
To respond to this double problem, the Social Security financing bill for 2021, which will be presented to the Council of Ministers on October 7, wants to introduce from January a fixed and universal user fee for emergency visits that do not are not followed by admission to hospital.
This “participation”, the “lump sum” of which must be “defined by decree”, will be “due for each passage to the emergency room since this passage will not be followed by hospitalization”, explains the project.
According to the government, this flat rate would be billed instead of the proportional user fee currently payable.
This will allow “for the patient to limit the very high out-of-charge situations.
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Exempt pregnant women and chronically ill
As a general rule, 80% of hospital costs are covered by health insurance, the balance often being covered by complementary health insurance.
Exceptions are however provided for pregnant women, chronically ill or even invalids who are exempt from this co-payment.
With this reform, the latter will also have to pay a fixed price if they go to the emergency room for a false alarm, that is to say without being hospitalized.
The amount of their contribution may however be reduced by ministerial decree.
According to the government, this measure should also help relieve emergency rooms by hoping that patients respect the course of care more by going through town medicine rather than going to the emergency room as soon as a small ailment appears.
City medicine still has to meet needs, but that's another issue ...
