French health-care reform: 30,000 uninsured: France's experience offers a caution to Canadians seeking similar health-care reform

Catholic New Times, May 21, 2006 by Tom Sandborn

Immediately after touring private and public hospitals in France, B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell told a Vancouver Sun reporter that he would consider allowing private for-profit hospitals to be funded by the government "as long as it doesn't violate the Canada Health Act." Two weeks later, on March 17, Campbell told the Williams Lake Tribune that French-style user fees were not on his agenda, but he did say that expanding private facilities to contract with the public system was a priority.

Campbell told the Sun he was struck by the fact that there was almost no debate over the propriety of privately owned hospitals, whether they are for-profit or not-for-profit, operating in France's complex health-care system.

"The thing I found most surprising here was there was virtually no discussion about the public versus the private system," Campbell said. But a Tyee correspondent based in Berlin, Dawn Paley, h.ad little trouble discovering such controversy in France.

300,000 Without Coverage

Doctors Without Borders, for example, estimates that over 300,000 people in France are now, after the most recent "reforms," totally without health-care coverage. The organization, best known for its work in the developing world, has begun providing medical care at clinics in Paris and Marseilles for patients who are denied insurance coverage under the new reforms. Le Monde, one of France's leading newspapers, editorialized in August of 2004 that "all the reforms that are proposed in France today tend toward an American style 'reform.'"

Helene Mandroux, mayor and president of the administrative council of the University Hospital in Montpelier, would disagree with Premier Campbell's opinion that there is no debate in France about health-care and private enterprise. She wrote on Jan. 20, 2006 that "once again, the public hospitals are being penalized and in proportionally to the increase in activity, which is even worse ... It is the will of the government to break the public system and social security."

Claude Evin, president of the Federation Hospitaliere de France, which represents all public hospitals in the country, spoke out the week after Campbell left Paris, characterizing the government's "reform" measures as "the threat these financial restrictions represent for the modernization of hospitals, for the revival of investment, for the following of the blueprint for public health and especially for the mental health plan."

So although the premier didn't find it during his overnighter in France, it appears there is substantial debate underway in that country about whether it is sound policy to privatize and restrict public health care, or whether that shift foolishly apes American models.

How French System Works

The current French health-care system is, unlike the systems in the other European countries visited on the Campbell tour, based on coverage through an array of insurance schemes.

This is in contrast to the systems in Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom, in which the main payer for health services is the government. These are known as Beverage systems, in contrast to the insurance-based Bismarck system that is in place in France. Insurance schemes also play a big role in the health-care systems of Germany and the Netherlands.

Almost everyone in France is covered by one of three insurance schemes: general, agricultural or self-employed/non agricultural. These insurance schemes refund between 60 and 70 per cent of what the patient pays a doctor, and approximately 80 per cent of the country's 60 million residents buy supplementary insurance to cover some or all of the remaining charges, while some low-income French residents get their co-payments covered by a free insurance scheme.

This patchwork of insurance schemes does not, as evidenced by the presence of Doctors Without Borders within France, guarantee that everyone has access to medical care, but even with that caveat, the French system is widely admired for its extensive coverage and its fiscal and clinical efficiency.

France vs. Canada

In 2000, the World Health Organization named France as the best health-care system in the world. In 2002, according to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Health Data study, French and Canadian health systems were similar on some key measures.

In 2002, Canadian health spending per capita was US$2,931.00 while France spent US$2,736.00. Private spending accounted for 30 per cent of health-care expenditures in Canada, while in France, the private payer covered 24 percent of all health-care spending.

France did have significantly more doctors per 1,000 people than Canada, with the French figure at 3.3 and the Canadian at 2.1. Similarly, France had 4.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, while the equivalent Canadian figure was 3.2.

Canadian life expectancy was marginally higher than French figures. The French system provides public payment for 67 per cent of pharmaceuticals prescribed, while the Canadian system only picks up 38 per cent of drug costs through the public sector.