Ehic times don’t match

RE: The Editor’s note appended to James Fonsec’s letter (A health cover anomaly, August).

You quote a British Department of Health spokeswoman saying that it may take up to three months to qualify for French healthcare and the (UK) Ehic would provide cover for that period.

As UK pensioners selling up in the UK and moving permanently to France in 2018, with S1 certificates in hand, our experience was that we couldn’t commence the application process for healthcare until after three months, as one of the requirements is to provide evidence that we had been resident for that time.

We got our CPAM rendezvous immediately after that and received our notices of registration together with the Attestation de droits a l’assurance maladie 15 weeks later, so for 28 weeks we had no French healthcare cover.

I am led to believe that this is the norm. Will the Ehic remain in force for that long?

Our cartes vitale arrived after another four months, more than 10 months after our arrival in France.

Roy Jones, by email

Editor’s Note: The UK health authorities have previously told Connexion that an Ehic card can be used right up to the moment you officially become resident in France.