Complementary health supplements cringe. Social Security wants to lower its reimbursements for dental care from October 2023, for an amount of 500 million euros per year which would be transferred to complementary health, AFP learned on Thursday June 15.
The Social Security Department has announced to complementary health insurance that from October 1, the coverage of dental care by Health Insurance will thus increase from 70% to 60%. It is up to the mutuals, insurers and provident institutions to compensate for this delisting.
This decision does not suit them either in substance or in form. “It’s not up to the challenges,” said the president of the French Mutuality, Eric Chenut, to AFP. He criticizes a “unilateral” and “technocratic” measure, which “will not make it possible to support the transformation of the health system, nor to respond to the preventive shift”. This choice is all the more “incomprehensible” since the government set up a “dialogue committee” at the beginning of the year to prepare a transfer initially costing 300 million, he recalls.
“Consequences on contributions”
Eric Chenut has also requested a meeting with François Braun, hoping that the Minister of Health “will ask his administration to implement the guidelines he has set”. But the arbitration has been validated by the government: the Ministry of Health confirmed in a press release the next “wider coverage of oral care by complementary”, up to half a billion euros. euros.
They warn that they will pass it on to their rates next year. “This decision will mechanically have consequences on contributions,” says Marie-Laure Dreyfuss, general delegate of the Technical Center for Provident Institutions (CTIP). She also deplores an “accounting measure” and “without any added value on the level of care and overall reimbursement of the insured”.
The bill could still swell according to the ongoing negotiations between Health Insurance and several professions, in particular dentists who could sign a new agreement by the end of July.
A negotiation with midwives is also about to end, while “flash” discussions have just opened with nurses and other paramedics to compensate for inflation. As for doctors, consultations will be increased by 1.50 euros on November 1, 2023, which will cost 700 million euros for Social Security and 100 million for complementary services for a full year.