Keyword: social security
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French welfare deficit higher than planned says minister
Heath minister Marisol Touraine says social security deficit will hit 11.7 billion euros this year instead of originally forecast of 9.8 billion.
France won’t cut spending on health care amid high social-security debt load
Health minister Marisol Touraine says health care spending will be maintained despite President Hollande's new pledge to reduce welfare 'abuses'.
EC calls for private sector competition to manage social security services
The national social security services of European Union member states are to be opened up to private sector competition according to the terms of a proposed European Commission directive on public procurement. The directive, presented in December 2011 by European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Michel Barnier, and due to be submitted to the European Parliament later this year, requires governments to launch a yearly invitation for tenders to manage sectors of their compulsory social security services, most of which until now have been managed according to the principle of social solidarity. Surprisingly, the proposal, contained in an annexe of the 246-page text of the directive, was until this month unnoticed by MEPs, several of whom have now mounted an urgent campaign to have it removed. Mediapart's Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports.
Government prepares a bitter pill for overcharging French doctors
Earlier this summer, France’s new socialist government announced a crackdown on the increasing number of self-employed doctors who charge fees well in excess of the standard rates refunded by the country’s social security system. The government is concerned that the explosion in fees charged by specialist practitioners is excluding many medium and lower income earners from being able to pay for consultations that are only partially reimbursed, often at less than a quarter of the fee demanded. Doctors’ representative bodies and the state social security office have been given until October 17th to thrash out an agreement, without which the government says it will introduce legislation this autumn to force the fees down. Vincent Manilève reports.
Threat to French arts and entertainment casuals' social security exception
The envy of struggling artists across the world, the French social benefits safety net for entertainment business casual workers is under threat.
Exposing the real fraud behind 'welfare-dependent France'
Welfare benefit fraud is currently a regular headline topic in the French media, and the ruling UMP conservative right party has made it a campaign issue for next year's presidential and legislative elections. But are France's welfare-dependent, dismissevely described as 'les assistés', really Europe's champion scroungers, as some pretend? Mathieu Magnaudeix argues here, figures in hand, why the issue is a political smokescreen that ignores both the facts and the massive cost of tax fraud and evasion by the well-off.