It went unnoticed but deputies voted in committee to end reimbursement for care prescribed by doctors not approved by Health Insurance.

This is a new addition to the Social Security budget that has gone unnoticed. As part of this week’s examination of the Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS) for 2026, the Social Affairs Commission of the National Assembly adopted a measure that, if maintained in the final text, could deal a severe blow to the purchasing power of some patients.

An amendment, presented by the general rapporteur of the PLFSS, Thibault Bazin (LR), proposes to stop reimbursing, as of January 1, 2027, care prescribed by doctors not approved by Health Insurance, considered in sector 3 because they set their consultation rates with complete freedom.

Currently, only consultations carried out by these doctors outside the health insurance scheme are almost not reimbursed. A patient who consults a general practitioner or an unauthorized specialist will only receive a Social Security authority rate. This price is from 43 to 61 cents for a general medicine consultation, from 85 cents to 1.22 euros for a consultation with a specialist.

Less than 1,000 unauthorized doctors in France

By failing to reimburse prescriptions written by an unapproved doctor, the bill could quickly become large for patients. Specifically, this would mean that an MRI, which for example is billed at a radiology center for around one hundred euros, would not be reimbursed at all by Social Security. The patients in question would therefore be interested in reinforcing their guarantees with their complementary health insurance, which will ultimately weigh more on their pocket.

However, the impact on patients’ purchasing power would be moderate to the extent that “non-contracted doctors represent only a modest fraction of the medical staff; in 2024 there would be 927,” recalls Thibault Bazin. With this measure, the general rapporteur for the Social Security budget aims above all to encourage the few recalcitrant doctors to join the ranks of the Health Insurance.

Please note that this measure does not affect doctors in sector 2, mainly specialists, who sometimes charge considerable excess fees. The latter, in fact, are agreed with Health Insurance, but in a sector that authorizes them to bill for their consultations and procedures at rates higher than the amounts used as a basis for reimbursement by Social Security. These excesses are generally covered at least partially by mutual and health insurance companies.