Grecian 1 CPAM 0

[Grecian]

I would like to post a victory for the little man against the mighty French bureaucratic system.

I had two appointments at Bordeaux on the 27th May and 12th June, for which I booked a taxi for each journey. I obtained a demande d'entente préalable for each journey and sent them off to CPAM at Noirt, they responded quite quickly, and informed me that they would only pay for a journey to Poitiers, as Bordeaux is outside the 150 kms limit. I told my doctor of this and he composed a very good letter for me explaining that I had not asked for the operation to be performed at Bordeaux, it was the surgeon at Bressuire hospital that sent me to Bordeaux. Also I had had two emergency operations performed at Bordeaux so it was imperative that I have my follow up appointments there.

We sent the appeal off nearly two months ago, and waited and waited and waited, for a reply. The taxi firm were getting a bit jumpy for their money as the combined bills came to nearly a 1000 euros. Yesterday I received a letter from CPAM, they was a lot of legal gobbly gook on the first page, but the one line that mattered said, after considering the new evidence provided the panel has agreed to pay for the two journeys in full, or something like that in French!

Yippee result obtained, I really do not know what will happen when I have my next appointment in October at Bordeaux, and will worry about that in October for the moment though:

Grecian 1 CPAM 0 [:D]

[nomoss]

Grecian. I'm glad you eventually got your money back, but I'm also glad that CPAM are careful in the way they spend the available money [:)]

BTW, we experienced a similar delay in getting a refund, for rather less, from the NHS, for charges made for medicine in Spain when my wife used her EHIC there following an accident.

We didn't regard this as a "victory", but as a reasonable resolution of an unusual claim.