Policy. LR senator doctors targeted by two ordinal complaints after the abolition of the AME
Two practitioners filed complaints on Friday before the Order of Physicians for violation of the Public Health Code against two LR senators, also professional doctors, who voted for the removal of state medical aid (SOUL).
The Senate adopted on Tuesday an amendment tabled by LR senators providing for the abolition of the AME, a system which fully covers the health costs of foreigners in an irregular situation present in France for at least three months, and transformed it into “aid emergency medical service” during the examination of the immigration bill. The text must now be examined by the National Assembly. Among the right and center senators who voted for the reform are around fifteen professional caregivers, doctors, pharmacists and nurses.
“We denounce, with numerous associations and health professionalsthe complicity of Ms. Marie Mercier, senator, and Mr. Jean-François Rapin, senator, members of an assembly whose decisions directly undermine the physical and psychological health of a population known to be particularly vulnerable. , write in their complaints doctors Georges Yoram Federmann, a psychiatrist based in Strasbourg, and Jean Doubovetzky, a general practitioner practicing in Albi.
A vote “in contradiction with the oath”
The complaints are addressed respectively to the presidents of the Departmental Council of the Order of Physicians of Saône-et-Loire, where Marie Mercier practices, and Pas-de-Calais, where Jean-François Rapin is based.
According to the plaintiffs, the two senators targeted, by voting to end the AME, violated five articles of the Public Health Code, including article R.4127-7 which stipulates that “the doctor must listen, examine, advise or treat with the same conscience all people whatever their origin, their morals and their family situation, their belonging or non-belonging to a specific ethnic group, nation or religion, their disability or their state of health, their reputation or the feelings he may have towards them. He must support them in all circumstances.”
Voting to abolish the AME is “in contradiction with the oath taken by doctors ‘to protect all people, without any discrimination, if they are weakened, vulnerable or threatened in their integrity or dignity'”, they still state in their complaint by Drs Federmann and Doubovetzky. According to them, the replacement of AME with emergency medical aid “represents an unprecedented setback for rights and public health in France”.
