The full and mandatory third-party payment will be implemented for ACS beneficiaries on July 1, without any guarantee of payment for the doctor, according to the MG France union.
Faced with complementary health insurance (mutuals, insurers, provident institutes) which have just created a common association to pilot their technical system of generalized third-party payment, the medical unions will not let go.
While the total generalization of the advance exemption from health costs for the French is scheduled for 2017, a first step must take place within a few days. Full and compulsory third-party payment will indeed be implemented for beneficiaries of theSupplementary Health Assistance (1) from July 1. For the main general practitioner union, MG France, this will be done without any guarantee of payment for the attending physician.
No more administrative tasks in consultation
In a press release published this Friday, the organization nevertheless recalls that “ from June 2014, MG France expressed its refusal of a compulsory third-party payment without guarantees ”.
However, in practice, the general practitioner will have to check the patient’s vital card, his third-party payment certificate, the type of contract and its validity, or even decide whether the third-party payment will be total or not according to the union.
MG France also hopes that the patient will have authorized the deduction of deductibles from his account and will not have changed attending physician. Finally, these doctors are unhappy with the fact that they will soon have to claim the part still owed by the patient in a good number of cases despite the “total third party payment” display advanced by the policies.
More administration once the patient is gone
All these formalities which will have to be done in front of the patient, during his consultation, are only some of the administrative tasks for the doctors. Once the consultation is over, “the general practitioner should, if all goes well, check that the expected sums have arrived on his account, and if, this is not the case, claim them”, deplores the union.
Faced with this observation, MG France tells the government that no general practitioner “will agree to devote his professional time to managing this ubiquitous device outside of consultations for which this service is necessary for the patient. “The announced third-party payment is indeed a political injunction, without guarantees or means, in practice unachievable by health professionals”, he concludes.
(1) ACS is reserved for people whose resources are slightly higher than the CMU-C award ceiling, The studies of the CMU Fund.
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