Plagued by Covid-19, social security should still show a heavy deficit in its budget for 2021, which the government will unveil on Tuesday, under the sign of the epidemic and its economic consequences, but also of new spending on credit.
After the shock of the health crisis, the Social Security goes to the cash.
Unlike the state budget, which has already been amended three times during the year, the social accounts have officially remained unchanged since the last financing law passed in December.
However, the government recognized in the spring that the Covid was going to plunge the Social Security into an abysmal deficit: 52 billion euros according to the last forecast in mid-June, including 31 billion for the health branch and 15 billion for the retirement branch.
Figures that will be updated Tuesday morning by the Social Security Accounts Commission, in view of the new forecasts from Bercy, a little less pessimistic for the recession this year (-10% all the same) and confident in a clear rebound (+ 8%) next year, which should translate into slightly lower-than-expected revenue.
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The sharp rise in unemployment (expected to be 9.5% at the end of 2020) and the continued partial employment of many employees (still 1.3 million people in August) risk, however, lasting reductions in contributions.
At the same time, health spending is soaring, to massively buy masks, then screening tests and perhaps soon vaccines but also to materialize the commitments of the “Ségur de la santé”.
Salary adjustments and an investment plan will thus inflate the envelope of hospitals and clinics by several billion.
The negotiations underway between Health Insurance and liberal caregivers could further increase the bill.
No "tax effort" required of the French
The executive does not intend to stop there: the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, has indeed guaranteed “at least one billion euros” additional for the new “fifth branch” of autonomy, which will bring together from next year the credits intended for disabled people and dependent elderly people.
Grain to grind while waiting for the "great age" law promised two years ago by Emmanuel Macron and again postponed to "the beginning of next year", the head of state refusing to increase taxes immediately for finance it, according to a source familiar with the matter.
On the other hand, he did not hesitate to announce himself the extension of paternity leave to 28 days (including 7 compulsory) from July 2021, which will cost 250 million to the family branch next year, then 500 million in 2022. A lavishness that is unlikely to be caught in default: with almost zero inflation (0.2% in August), the usual blows of the plane on pensions, disability pensions and family allowances are superfluous.
No question either of "asking the French for a tax effort", warned the Prime Minister, Jean Castex.
With one exception: complementary health will have to pay an "exceptional contribution" (one billion euros in 2021, 500 million in 2022) for the sums they did not spend during and after confinement.
In the absence of savings and other levies, the penultimate budget of the five-year period will increase the debt a little more.
A choice assumed by the government, which voted this summer the possibility of adding to the “security hole” up to 92 billion accumulated deficits over the period 2020-2023.
The return to equilibrium, briefly glimpsed in 2018 before the “yellow vests” crisis, seems under these conditions to have to be postponed indefinitely.
