health insurance

[smudge]

Hi All  We are looking to move to France next year, I will have retired and drawing UK state pension, do I have to take out private health ins or will the French health care system take care of any costs? If a top up is required can anybody suggest an ins company bearing in mind I am only on uk state pension so money is tight.

Thanking you for your help.

Smudge

[Russethouse]

 I'll be blunt - if you are only on UK state pension why do you think its a good idea to move to France ?

[idun]

No the french health service will not cover all your costs, only in exceptional circumstances do they, ie you are very ill with something like cancer, they have a list of these illnesses. But then they only fully cover that actual illness,  if you say broke your leg, that would be treat as usual and you would have to pay part of the bill, if you did not have top up insurance. And even then, not all top insurance policies cover everthing either.

Top up insurance, well, I would not be without it, but it is expensive.

Also, no one is not supposed to move to France if they cannot support themselves. So the question is, can you????

It isn't as if it is a cheaper country.

[nomoss]

[quote user="smudge"]

Hi All  We are looking to move to France next year, I will have retired and drawing UK state pension, do I have to take out private health ins or will the French health care system take care of any costs? If a top up is required can anybody suggest an ins company bearing in mind I am only on uk state pension so money is tight.

Thanking you for your help.

Smudge

[/quote]

 

It would be difficult to live in France on the basic UK pension alone, unless you have sufficient savings to draw on or produce extra income.

You need to carefully research the costs of renting or buying a house, maintaining it, and paying the overheads and local taxes (equivalent of rates) before you make a decision.

You may get partial exemption from local taxes because of low income, but not before you have lived here long enough to make an annual tax return to establish your actual income.

Your health care would be covered via forms S1, which are supplied from the UK Pensions Service, and entitle you to the same cover as French people, but this is far from full cover.

You still have to pay 30% plus 1€ of doctors' bills (currently this works out to €7.90 for a GP visit), a varying proportion of up to 85% for prescriptions, and 20% plus room and board for hospitalisation. You therefore really need top up insurance via a mutuelle to cover at least hospitalisation, as this could be crippling financially.

The percentages quoted by the heath service and the mutuelles refer to the proportions of standard charges which they will reimburse. Actual charges can be several multiples of the standard charges, so insurances routinely offer cover for 100%, 200%, or 300% of standard.

There are schemes in place to cover health costs for people with very low incomes, but I don't know if these are available to those just arriving in France, or who have never paid into the system.

A typical cost, this year, for minumum (100%) cover for hospitalisation for a 65 year old is €400 p.a., rising to €610 at 80.

For 300% hospitalisation plus 100% for cover out of hospital and medicaments it is €871 at 65 and €1,327 at 80.