They warn that the government risks "breaking the French thermal industry": 60 senators oppose the transfer of reimbursement of cures to mutual societies

Nearly sixty senators from 42 thermal departments called on Wednesday Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to "give up" on a project which aims to transfer the reimbursement of thermal cures to complementary health insurance, fearing a weakening of the sector. In a letter of which AFP obtained a copy, these parliamentarians from the right, left and center call to be received by the head of government. “Hydrotherapy deserves a transparent, contradictory debate that is respectful of the scientific work in progress.

The future of this medicine, access to care for thousands of patients and the balance of many territories cannot be decided without dialogue or before the expertise requested by the government has rendered its conclusions", write these senators, at the initiative of the elected LR of Puy-de-Dôme Jean-Marc Boyer. During a question asked to the government on Wednesday in the hemicycle, the latter accused the government of wanting to "break the French thermal industry". In his draft budget of the Social security, rejected in the Assembly and examined from November 9 in the Senate, the government wants to save Health Insurance 200 million euros in reimbursement of thermal treatments by transferring this expense to complementary health insurance.

A report from the HAS in the pipeline Seized by the government last year, the High Authority for Health (HAS) began an evaluation of the therapeutic contribution of thermal cures. Its conclusions will not be submitted before “the end of 2027”, Minister of Health Stéphanie Rist told the Senate. The senators call on the government to wait for these conclusions before reviewing the conditions of support.

“Any development must be able to rely on completed scientific expertise,” they insist. “We are not proposing a de-reimbursement, it is a new distribution between compulsory health insurance and mutual insurance companies which will always be able to cover the supplement,” maintained Ms. Rist. These debates on the reimbursement of thermal cures had already tense Parliament last year during budgetary discussions, with long hours of examination dedicated to this subject in both chambers, marked by transpartisan alliances of circumstance between parliamentarians from thermal territories.

Machine-translated from French