Medical Cover

[Cat]

Looking for some simple answers....if there are any. When moving to France what is the situation for someone who has had a liver transplant and will need regular yearly consultations. Is it possible to utilise French health service if necessary? If living in Francefulltime is it still possible to access NHS? All is really well and I'm great but I would like some information regarding these issues. Any help would be most appreciated as these are big issues in the future of my wife and I. Thanks. Pres

[woolybanana]

Are you in receipt of the UK state old age pension?

 

[AnOther]

In a nutshell:

To receive health care in France you will need to have an E form of some sort from UK. This would normally be an E106 or E121. Confusingly these have both recently been renamed S1 now but for the sake of discussion I will refer to them by their old names.

An E106 is normally issued to a person who is under UK retirement age with a reasonably complete NI record covering at least the previous 2 full UK tax years. Timed right it can cover you for up to 2.5 years (or as little as 13 months if you get it wrong) after which, if neither of you have yet reached retirement age, you would need to take out private insurance, difficult if not impossible with pre-existing conditions. There is another version of the E106 colloquially known as a 'workers E106' which is issued to a person who lives in France but remains employed in UK paying tax and NI.

An E121 is issued to a person who is in receipt of a UK state pension or in some cases incapacity benefit. That is in receipt of by the way, not just of retirement age or entitled to.

In both case the E form will extend cover to a spouse and dependants who live with you. Once you have lived here for 5 years then you can join the French system by default.

Whatever, if you live in France you will not be able to use the NHS, or at least not in the way you seem to be suggesting or hoping for, i.e. routine checks for your previous problems.

Hope this helps but I'm sure others will chip in in due course.

PS, I forgot my manners, welcome to the forum !

[5-element]

Welcome to the forum, and very glad that you are doing well with your graft liver.

 To add to what has already been said:

If you are eligible to join the French healthcare system, either via an E106 or an S1 form. then post-transplant care would be available free of charge to you. Organ transplant comes into the ALD category, which gives you 100% medical cover for anything directly related to the transplant. That includes any specialist consultation you may need, as well as immuno-suppressants/anti-rejection drugs which, presumably, you have to take daily??? You don't mention those, and yet they are absolutely crucial - and very costly.

[cooperlola]

Hello Cat and welcome to the forum.

The other option for you of course is to work.  If you are moving to take up employment here then your cotisations will cover your healthcare and that of your dependants, to the level which a French citizen is entitled - a top up insurance can be purchased for anything not covered 100%as an ALD, and these insurances cannot, by law, exclude pre-existing conditions.

I know we sound nosey, but your personal situation is the key to your healthcare rights.  For more info', see our website (link below).  We are a voluntary group (pretty much defunct now, but the website info is still largely correct) with no ties to any comercial organisation.

EDIT : Just one ammendment to the site and that is that the majority of the E forms referred to both on there and are here, are now all confusingly S1s.[:-))]

[Cat]

Hi everyone

Firstly, many thanks for taking the time to respond to my post. I have really struggled to get any sensible answers here.

To clarify, I am 42 years old for many years I have had a chronic liver disease, which resulted in my urgently needing a transplant earlier this year. Thankfully, I am well now and back to work. Going through an experience of this nature has made my wife and I bring forward our dream of living and working in France.

I am dependant on daily medication and regular checks, which is costly, and will be for the rest of my life.

Basically, is is true that if I work and pay my contributions, and have the S1, in France, plus the fact that my condition is covered as an ALD, that I will be covered for anything related to my condition?

I am pretty sure that this what you have all indicated but I am also sure that you can see that this is very crucial to our future in France.

Thanks for your replies its very much appreciated.

Presley

[cooperlola]

If you work here then you will pay your contibutions into the health system and benefit from it - the S1 will not enter into it.

The S1 is for those who live here but whose healthcare is paid for by the UK.  Thus (as explained above), if you work in the UK but live here, then you will get an S1.  If you don't work but get Incapcity Benefit from the UK then you may get an S1 from the UK.  If you do not propose to work here but have a good NI contributions record for the last 3 years then you will  be entitled to an S1 for up to 30 months, depending upon when you leave work in the UK.  If you live here but don't work (ie live on savings or a pension) here  then you need private health insurance from the time any S1 entitlement runs out, until you have lived here for five years.

Thus, to my mind, the crucial thing for you both is to be sure you have work here before you take the plunge.  Unemployment is high and the system is weighted very much in favour of the native-born French person.