Mutual health insurance is becoming more and more expensive for retirees: the Senate wants to create complementary health insurance at less than 2 euros per day for those over 70

The senators may have found a way to reduce the bill for retirees in terms of health expenses. During the examination of the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2027 in public session, this Friday, November 13, parliamentarians at the Palais du Luxembourg adopted an amendment creating a sort of “C2S seniors”. Supplementary solidarity health insurance (C2S) is aid intended for people with low incomes.

Led by the socialist Xavier Iacovelli, the system aims to reduce the cost of supplementary health insurance for those aged 70 and over with modest incomes, following a recommendation made in a report that he co-wrote and submitted in 2024. "Retirees are the first to be affected by the continued increase in supplementary health contributions. No longer benefiting from the participation of their employer, they take out individual contracts whose price increases with age.

For some of them, supplementary health insurance represents a considerable part of the disposable income, which leads to renunciation of care or termination of the contract", points out the senator from Hauts-de-Seine. A third floor In detail, it is proposed to create a third floor to complementary solidarity health insurance. As a reminder, this system first allows policyholders whose financial resources are below 10.

421 euros per year for a single person to benefit from health coverage without paying any contributions. Beyond this, and within the limit of 14,069 euros still for a single person, it is possible to benefit from this mutual but with a slight financial contribution which does not exceed one euro per day.

The measure adopted by the senators this Thursday consists of creating a third level which would allow seniors to benefit from health coverage at a lower cost, with a contribution of less than two euros per day. “In order to guarantee a reasonable rate of effort for these policyholders, it is proposed to create aid in the form of a deduction from the additional solidarity tax due by complementary organizations, fully passed on to the policyholder's contribution,” explains Xavier Iacovelli. “This mechanism, which takes over the operation of the old assistance for the payment of supplementary health insurance, makes it possible to target assistance to people aged seventy and over with modest resources, by conditioning it on compliance with the specifications of responsible contracts and a contribution ceiling remaining the responsibility of the insured,” he continues.

Rejection of the surcharge On Thursday, senators had already almost unanimously refused to extend the 2.05% surcharge, applied exceptionally in 2026 to mutual and health insurance contracts to generate 1.1 billion euros in savings for Social Security. This surcharge had been strongly criticized by complementary health insurance organizations, while contracts are usually already taxed at 13.27% for offers labeled responsible and 20.27% for others which do not follow the specifications defined by the public authorities. “The continued increase in mutual insurance prices would particularly penalize the purchasing power of the French,” denounced Senator Serge Bérard (Nouvelle Énergie), criticizing like most of his colleagues an “indirect tax” probably passed on by mutual insurance companies to their members.

Faced with multiple transfers of charges from health insurance to complementary health insurance, mutual funds and insurance companies have repeatedly increased their prices more or less significantly in recent years. According to the Addactis barometer unveiled at the end of September, the median increase in 2027 could be between 8 and 8.3% depending on the type of contract.

Machine-translated from French