Les Français se sont mobilisés pour refuser le RN au pouvoir et se retrouvent ce matin avec un « Bruno Megret » aux petits pieds qui veut s’en prendre à l’AME au mépris de la santé publique et de toute éthique médicale…la collaboration est en marche https://t.co/UbTNXnjx9M
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Removing AME would be more expensive than maintaining it
Behind Bruno Retailleau's proposal, there is also a notion of economy. By reducing the scope of action of AME, transforming it into emergency medical aid, the goal is to reduce the budget of Social Security. However, according to Aurélien Rousseau, Roselyne Bachelot, François Braun, Agnès Buzyn, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Marisol Touraine, Frédéric Valletoux and Olivier Véran, the signatories of the platform, this will not work: "Weakening AME means exposing our health system to increased pressure from later and therefore more serious and more costly care." AME represents an expenditure of 1.2 billion euros per year, or about 0.5% of health expenditure provided for in the Sécu budget. Last year, there were 466,000 AME beneficiaries.
A danger to public health
The eight former ministers finally warn of the risks that a removal, or a reduction, of the AME would represent for public health. They explain that financially preventing a person from consulting a general practitioner for a pathology would only delay their care, pushing them to go to the emergency room with a more serious health concern: “The care of a beneficiary costs seven times more than hospital than in community medicine.” They are also worried about the risk of an epidemic that this could represent, while the world is still traumatized by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Concretely, weakening the AME means disinvesting in the field of prevention, whether it is vaccination or screening. In fact, such a step backwards creates a risk to the public health of all our fellow citizens, particularly infectious ones,” comment the ministers, who also warn about medical ethics. As the National Council of the Order of Physicians recalls, the Hippocratic oath, taken by all doctors before practicing, says: “I will respect all people, their autonomy and their will, without any discrimination according to their “condition or their convictions”, “I will give my care to the indigent and to “whoever asks me for them.” Furthermore, the Declaration of Geneva, annexed to the Code of Medical Ethics and adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Association in 1948, states: “I WILL NOT PERMIT that considerations of age, disease or infirmity, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social status or any other factor come between my duty and my patient.”