Why French health authorities will be sending you more emails
Easier access to information on reimbursements aims to reduce fraud in sector
Recipients do not need to do anything with the emails
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Recipients of reimbursements from France's state health insurance will soon receive emails informing them of all of the refunds they have received.
The new measure will see Assurance Maladie send “an email to each insured person to inform them as soon as a healthcare expense has been covered in their name,” said Financial Director of the Caisse nationale d’Assurance maladie (Cnam) Marc Scholler in a post on social media LinkedIn.
The aim is to reduce fraud, and show people the level of the reimbursements they receive from a system that saw a deficit of €14 billion in 2024.
Recipients do not need to do anything with the emails, which will be sent automatically.
‘Healthcare is priceless… but it has a cost’
This information is already available to recipients through their online ‘Ameli’ account with the state health insurer, which shows reimbursements from both Assurance Maladie and top-up mutuelle insurers (if the latter are linked to the account).
However, informing patients of the reimbursement directly “encourages them to see what solidarity has actually financed on our behalf,” said Mr Scholler.
“Healthcare is priceless, but it does have a cost,” he added, citing that out of every €1,000 spent on healthcare currently, €54 is spent on financing interest on the social security debt in France, as expenditure on the social security system exceeds its revenue.
The email scheme is also aimed at reducing fraud, with officials hoping that people will check that the procedure for which they are being reimbursed was actually the one undertaken and not a fictitious or overcharged procedure.
“If an anomaly appears—for example, a procedure that was never performed but billed - everyone can react… the goal is to share the task of fraud monitoring with the patients themselves,” Mr Scholler added, telling Le Parisien of an example where a man who had attended a dental health centre for a €40 scaling then saw on his Ameli account the centre had claimed €8,000 for dental prostheses.
The full post on Mr Scholler’s LinkedIn page can be viewed here.
More than €260 million in fraudulent claims was averted in 2024 due to anti-fraud measures, with Assurance Maladie hoping these emails further reduce the impact of fraud.
Other anti-fraud schemes recently introduced in the sector include paper sick-notes only being accepted if they are official ‘Cerfa’ forms.
