Accessibility of health care for foreigners
Since 1998, ill foreigners are entitled to a residence permit if they have a serious pathology that could not be treated in their country of origin. However, NGOs have been denouncing for years the administrative barriers put to this law's implementation. The last report of the Monitoring Center for Access to Health Care of the Médecins du Monde French NGO issued in October 2009 picked several obstacles out: length of the procedure; pressure put on doctors in charge of evaluating the cases to make them limit the number of residence permits; increasing number of temporary permits, expulsion of seriously ill people. It also pointed up that the "country cards" used by the administration established a list of treatable diseases in each country without taking into account the actual financial and geographical accessibility of treatments. Since the publication of this report, the French Council of State pronounced 2 decisions, on 7 April 2010, where it reminded that the accessibility of health care should be evaluated by doctors on the basis not only of the national health care system of each country, but also of its territorial and financial accessibility for the concerned patient. Consequently, these two decisions put an end to the system of "country cards" used so far.
Source: ODSE press release, 06.07.2010, "Droit au séjour pour raison médicale : Le Conseil d’État réaffirme la protection contre l’éloignement et le droit au séjour des étrangers malades résidant en France n’ayant pas un accès effectif aux soins dans leur pays d’origine", http://www.odse.eu.org/Droit-au-sejour-pour-raison, Accessed on 19.12.2011.
