Current Healthcare Issues in France
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The French healthcare system has been ranked as one of the most successful healthcare systems across the European countries and from which a point of reference can be made by any health system undergoing reforms. The system has been characterized in offering the best highest levels of satisfaction and the presence of the highest resources used. The healthcare system is known to have a combined universal coverage of both public and private mix of hospitals. The state runs the public hospitals while the clinics are run by self-employed professionals who are otherwise approved by the French government.
However, many specialists work in both the state hospitals and private clinics and are sometimes entitled to sell their services to whichever hospital or clinic that wants to pay them.
France provides basic, universal health insurance through the occupation based funds, which covers about 99% of the French total population. About 83% of French workers are covered by the general health insurance scheme while also covering the remaining 17% of the other occupational specific such as the miners and agricultural sectors. French healthcare system spends about 11% of the country’s GDP, making it the most expensive and well-funded healthcare system across the European countries. Apart from the government’s funding, a health insurance scheme runs funded through contributions by employers, employees, and self-employed persons with pay of more than 20% of their gross salary.
The French politicians have, for long, supported their healthcare system as a market-based with centralized decision-making. The French national health insurance has, however, in the past incurred deficits, especially in the years of 2006 and 2005. In the past three decades, the successive French governments have overseen healthcare reforms with a comprehensive plan coming under Prime Minister Juppe in 1996. Irrespective of the government is right or left, there has been a common goal of pursuing a healthcare system: cost control. However, the system has currently been under critical scrutiny from the French politicians.
The French Healthcare system is primarily supported by more than 23 000 general practitioners, and a good number of specialists spread across the country’s health system. Both the general practitioners and specialists are either self-employed or working under the state-run hospitals. The citizens have the freedom to choose a specialist or general practitioner of their own choice as a personal doctor with every visit made payable though at a flat-rate fee. In 2019 the cost was 25€ per visit, and that is, in most cases, reimbursed into the patient’s account by the state-financed health insurance provider. Healthcare insurances are also used to cater to accidents and emergency responses, specialized treatments from specialists within the country, medicines, and pharmaceuticals.
With all the challenges and successes the French healthcare system has undergone, then came the covid19 pandemic, which has brought the whole world stand still. Since recording its first cases in February 2020, it has currently recorded over five hundred and fifty thousand cases as of 4th October 2020. Out of these numbers, more than thirty-one thousand have died from the virus. This is a very challenging situation with the demand the virus has come for the response from the health systems worldwide; the French health system is not an exemption. With most initial cases requiring hospitalization, the need for intervention from the healthcare insurance providers to cater to the cost was essential since most French nationals either lost their jobs or were sent home for unpaid leaves. And like any other state in the world, France being under an economic recession, her healthcare system has remained stable since the country reported the first covid19 case.