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EHIC Success!


Gardian
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Frecossais wrote.....''I have heard that it's better to get the paperwork done before leaving France rather than waiting till you get back home. Don't know if our account has been credited yet, as we're in England now.''

Not in my experience, a couple of years ago, before we were resident in France, we had a quite large medical bill due to an emergency admission. We paid the bills, returned to UK, submitted the originals together with the appropriate claim form. Two weeks later the full amount was credited to our UK bank account.

Simple and efficient.
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I would have thought so.. A copy of a utility bill would probably be OK too. I'd bet though the requirement would vary from place to place and as to whether there was an 'r' in the month!

However, your situation begs a wider question - that of being able to produce 'proof of identity'.

I don't remember where I read it (probably on here in some context or other), but I have a feeling that its a requirement over here, not necessarily in this scenario, but say in the event of some kind of offence.
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[quote user="sean8n"]Do you know if a driving license is OK for the ID? My UK passport is out of date but I only have a UK EHIC card.[/quote]

sean8n, you need to renew your passport. I know these things can expire

and we haven't realised so we don't get them done 'immediately' but I

believe that british citizens residing in France have to have an up to

date passport.

And if you aren't living in France, then I'm not quite sure how you could end up with a UK EHIC card and no passport. And no idea under what circumstances  you would need a driving license as ID.

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I'm dual nationality, I came with the other passport this time.

If necessary, I'll get my UK passport renewed but I want to avoid that if some other ID will do. The driving license is UK, but it's old with no photo.

If I have to renew the UK passport, I'll have to get the reimbursement on the next trip over which begs the question - how long do we have to submit the claim?

I think I read somewhere three months...
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So you have a french ID card or french passport or both, so why the question about an old none photo driving license? You don't need to have a UK passport at all.

I feel sure that I have read recently that the old none photo licenses have got to be replaced? Or is the old memory going?[Www]

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  • 3 weeks later...
[quote user="Gardian"]

Just an update.

Before our son left us to return to the UK, we prepared a covering letter (from him) to accompany his claim to CPAM. Basically it asked if the reimbursement could be made to me, since it was his father who'd forked out for the nurse's fees and the dressings!

One month later, he has just received a letter asking him to provide a RIB in order that reimbursement can be made. Fair enough I suppose, but I can kiss goodbye to that €150-ish once it hits his a/c !!

Now he's going to have to ask his UK bank for a RIB and I can just imagine the chaos that's going to cause. I've told him that it'll have to an 'official' document, since the French don't do 'back of a fag packet' stuff.

Beginning to think that sending the claim off to Newcastle might have been a better option.

[/quote]

Aaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!

So he got a RIB from his UK bank and sent it back.

Then he had another letter from Nimes (the 1st one was from Narbonne) asking him to sign (again!) one of the Feuille de Soins which had clearly got separated from the rest of the dossier. Fine - he did that.

Another letter from Narbonne today. Put simply, it said "You gave us a RIB for a foreign a/c and we can't credit that. If you want the amount to be credited to your parents' a/c, please fill in this form and return it signed by both parties (with a copy of a piece d'identite for both of you) ."

So ............. up until now, they've completely ignored his original covering letter asking them to credit our a/c, but its clearly there with the dossier, otherwise they wouldn't have known about "vos parents".

Onwards and upwards - I've told him to fill in their bloody form and send it to me with a copy of his passport, so that I can do the same including providing details of our local Maire, current weather status, my inside leg measurement ...................   

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  • 5 weeks later...
You couldn't make it up.

Within days of the above (and before I received the form from him), he received a cheque from them for £25-ish.

Then a week or so later, he received another cheque for €80-ish. The accompanying letter told him in no uncertain terms that if he'd provided his bank IBAN details, they could have effected payment directly to him and much more quickly.

Yesterday, he received another cheque for €8!!

In the middle of all this, he received a bill for €16 from our local hospital for his A&E treatment.

So .................... after more than 3 months, 7 letters, 3 cheques (one of which is useless, because his bank charge £7 to credit a Euro cheque), he's got back about £80 of the €180 that I forked out ! (BTW, I fully understand that the reimbursement would only ever be a % of the sum expended). I've also got a bill to pay of €16.

Moral of the tale? Make your claim to Newcastle - it has to be easier than this fiasco.

He asked me yesterday "Is it always like this over there Dad?" You can guess my reply.
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Interesting to read of others' experiences. OH walked into a concrete beam on Friday and cut his head open.. prompting a trip to Urgences.

It actually struck me how very like the NHS the whole thing was. He was seen in triage and then got seen properly after another hour, where he was stitched up by an intern, whilst the rest of the team dealt with the 6 emergency ambulances that arrived. In the meantime the waiting room was heaving, filled with a mixture of the sick, the injured, the drunk and the mentally ill, and their relatives.

We have no top up insurance but popped in our way out to check that there was nothing to pay.. OH had to go and buy a tube of sterile Vaseline as apparently it is the best dressing for a head wound. He had a prescription for paracetemol, but we didn't bother to get it as we have loads anyway. He has a prescription for a nurse to take the stitches out in 10 days, for which I assume he will pay but get a percentage reimbursed.
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I claimed mine before the July 2014 deadline and it was easy. That was then!

Reading the new regulations I am wondering how on earth holidaymakers can supply French bank details when in this case they are not resident in France and don't have a French bank account. Or perhaps I read it too quickly and they can supply U.K. (or other E.U.) bank details.[8-)]

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L1000, over the years I was in les urgences more times than I care to remember, casse-cou sportif youngest boy, eldest, less sportif, but also had his moments and a Papa, also sportif, who managed some injuries too. Me, I was in only once.

And yes, I agree that I find next to no difference between the les urgences and A&E, as my 'boys' could as easily have an accident in either country. Apart from 'me' who managed to time going in, and that was in France, we always had long waits, usually it was hours and hours. There was always one difference in France, and that was that they always wanted our paperwork. Our attestation from the CPAM and later, either that or a Carte Vitale, an updating borne being handy, and our mutuelle documents.

As the seçu has such a big black hole in it, I cannot understand why they did not want anything from you. I know that the bills can take a long time to get through though. IF they don't charge you, how do they keep open and balance their books?

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We have carte vitales and they asked see OH's. We don't have a mutuelle for the difference but maybe because emergencies are reimbursed at 100% they didn't need anything else? I'll re post if we ever get a bill, but on checking with the person that signed us in, she didn't think there was anything extra to pay.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Same injury, same story, same cost even down to the nurse taking out the stitches. Mine was à domicile though.

I also got an ambulance ride and a CT scan thrown in for good measure, the ambulance was free the CT scan and stitches all came as part of the €21 (less 70%) consultation fee.

To put things in perspective had I paid for a taxi to take me home it would have cost at least €100, I had to act as an interpreter for a group of Dutch that had suffered an RTA, the taxi to take them maybe 10k max around the rocade to the nearest budget hotel was more than €50, my journey was 40km.

Yet  I read people posting that after a small injury like mine and your OH's they see that their mutuelle had to pay out X thousand Euros, when I read those I wonder if I live in a parallel universe.

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And there was me always thinking that I lived in a parallel universe[blink]

Our nurses never charged much, I used to wonder how they made a living. Same with our GP's, what with their expenses and equipment and knowing the days they worked.

Our hospitals though billed,  privé or public, all of them billed, and I even had a depassement d'honoraires in a public hospital once, wish I could remember how much. As it was about 14 years ago, I know that it was at least £30, and could have been rather more than that.

My son was charged a lot for an ambulance taxi once, when he had a ski board accident, and I had to fight to get that back.

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I suspect that language may come into some of the horror/scare stories.

As you say the first priority once you are scraped off the road is to see your carte vitale and/or insurance documents, this is repeated again at hospital admisssion before anyone will tend to you, people with a mutuelle look smugly on at the guy on the gurney beside them spouting blood and about to pop their clogs while trying to explain how their bill will be paid.

Then there is the cultural notion in France that someone must pay even for our own mistakes, perhaps especially so, if there is any doubt over someones eligibility and not all people with coverage have a carte vitale, perhaps compounded by the patients lack of language and even negotiating skills then they are going to insist on a credit card and once they have filled their boots on that just like they do with the Secu then getting them to admit that they have made a mistake and that you did actually have coverage is as difficult as..........., well as difficult as getting a French person to accept they have made a mistake [:D]

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If my local hospitals A&E had terrible waiting times,I have to say that those spouting blood were taken straight through, no interogation, nothing like that. And I spent enough hours and hours and hours in there waiting with usually youngest son, so saw enough of critical patients going through. It was those with non life threatening things that got the 3rd degree.

And yes, someone has to pay, that is how it works. BUT sometimes one has to pay for oneself even when it is someone else's fault. We had this happen twice, once very costly to us and both sporting related.

With every sport we had to take an insurance, and for some reason, I had an expectation that this would work IF there was ever an accident. For two sports, karate and judo, these insurance add ons, were not worth the paper they were written on.

Son got an elbow in his mouth and at 13 basically lost four teeth. This was the son that had perfect teeth and no need of a brace! I thought that the sports insurance would cover or the other lad's insurance would cover, but no. It was our house insurance and we had to be sharp about claiming. They took over all dental charges and eventual crowns, as they could not be done until he was older.

Husband's instructor mis-hit him in the back of the leg and did for his cruciate ligament. Needed an operation eventually and was off work for so long that he lost a lot of pay. Hard times for us. Was it his sport's insurance that paid, or his instructor's insurance, again, no, our house insurance that paid the lot and again we had to be sharp about putting the initial claim in.

So yes, someone has to pay, but beware, it could be you, even if it isn't your fault.

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I know this is drifting off the original topic a bit, but if you turn up at the emergency department with a sports injury don't they just treat it like any other accident, or do they expect details of your home insurance or sports insurance? When we were in urgences they asked if it was a work injury and we just said no, as he was working on our own house.. but how would it have been different if we had said yes?
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Lindal1k you have asked a question or two there.

Unless everything has radically changed, then yes, they treat a sports accident like they treat anything else, it is who pays what and when that then comes into play. I had kept every last bit of paperwork and records of all the accidents and mon mari made me get rid of them all last year, I'm now sorry I did.

IF memory serves and it was years ago, when son had his teeth knocked out, this is what happened. The dentist rebuilt them, no idea what with and then checked them regularly. His sport insurance would not cover them, either for him or the boy who had knocked his teeth out. And neither would the home insurance for the other boy either, it was down to ours. So we had just a couple of days to declare an accident with our insurance and then they paid. Every thing that was not covered by the CPAM and mutuelle we got back from our home insurance. They paid about £1000 for all the treatment over the years.

What can I say, it just felt so wrong that the 'victim' had to pay and everyone told me that it was 'normal' and that if one did sport then there was always a risk.

I do believe that some sports have a special insurance that covers more, and I checked with the one that the sport my son did and they still would not have covered as much as our home insurance did.

Same same with husband's accident.

Re the working......say you had been helping a neighbour and had an accident whilst working at their place, or they at yours, then so many things can come into play and all sorts of authorities may get involved. ie the suggestion that work 'au noir' is being done.  I know I would not like to be in that situation, that is for sure.

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So the moral is when asked that question to always say it was an accident at home?

I must admit I wouldn't expect to ever be able to claim for a sports related injury. My friend in the UK lost her front teeth when she went over the handlebars of her mountain bike. No one to blame but herself and her dental insurance wouldn't cover it because it excluded damage to teeth caused by participating in high risk sports.

Incidentally when OH bashed his head on the concrete block my brother suggested that he sue himself for negligence.
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