Hi all, thanks again in advance for your input. What would be your price-indication for a full private health insurance, under 50 years, maximum own risk, basic coverage? Any leads of websites where I can see straight away what the price would be without first asking a time-consuming quote through email etc?
Does anyone know of a website where you can compare different insurances and are able to see concrete prices without asking a quote or emailing first?
As a first stop, you could look at the link for @fabien under the insurance tab at the top of the page.
Purely as a rough guide, we pay about 3400⏠annually for cover, principally for hospitalisation, cancer treatment etc, which we judged the main risks. We have a high excess to reduce the premium and therefore meet all routine doctors fees, medicines, scans etc ourselves.Age didnât seem to be factored into the calculation (by AXA International). French insurers refused to cover us due to a proper medical condition (which we offered to exclude!).
No idea of current rates but when I first lived and worked here in my 50s I paid around 8,000 FF (ÂŁ800 I think) for full health cover, now, in my 80s I pay around 1400 âŹ.
Hello, we actually have an online calculator specifically for that here => Medical insurance - Fab French Insurance
But careful of what you call âprivate medical insuranceâ in France. If this is for a visa or waiting until you are part of French public healthcare then the above link is the one to go. But if it is to supplement French healthcare (which is also technically PMI but we donât call it that) then youâd need a mutuelle and for this we have another calculator you can find here => Top-Up French Health Insurance | France Mutuelle Insurance
Hope that helps?
I thought they werenât allowed to do that.
Is that for a mutuelle, David? I think the OP was looking for indicative prices for full insurance, ie for those not yet affiliated to the French system.
The insurers told us that for mutuelles (ie for those already in Assurance Maladie), theyâre not allowed to discriminate against those with prior medical conditions. However for those - like us - seeking full private cover outside Assurance Maladie, they can - and evidently do - discriminate, and repeatedly refused cover.
The strange thing is that the prior medical condition isnât one that weâre likely to ever claim on, and we offered to exclude it completely from coverage, but that wasnât good enough for the French insurers. So ironically, we got coverage from AXA International, in London, I think (from memory) with no exclusions for prior medical conditions.
Seriously? Iâd be very interested if that was the case. Presumably there was screening for existing conditions?
To deviate slightly from the original question, which I understood concerns the cost of full health insurance, Iâm in the process of trying to get my husband signed up for PUMA.
There are 2 conditions to be met for joining PUMA: ârĂ©gularitĂ©â and âstabilitĂ©â of residence in France.
The first step was to complete a Demande dâouverture de droits, which was submitted about 3 months ago. On the basis of that, theyâve decided heâs an âinactif europĂ©enâ.
As an EU national, he doesnât have to show a residence permit.
I assume thatâs the reason behind the request weâve received from the CPAM, to supply humungous amounts of supporting documents. Presumbly, because he doesnât have a residence permit, he has to use other ways to prove that he « rĂ©side de maniĂšre rĂ©guliĂ©re en France ».
This includes a request to provide proof that he has fully comprehensive private medical insurance, with a breakdown of the cover.
Possibly, if someone has a non-EU passport and therefore a residence permit, the latter is considered proof that the person has satisfied the ârĂ©guliĂ©reâ (lawful) bit of the requirement to ârĂ©sider de maniĂšre stable et rĂ©guliĂ©re en Franceâ.
So perhaps someone applying as a British national, with a residence permit, might actually find it easier to join PUMA, at least in terms of volume of paperwork. I donât know if this is true or not. Just an idea.
Itâs coming back to me nowâŠalthough the policy summary excludes prior conditions, (see attached), when we spoke to AXA and told them about the prior conditions they just said, fine, no problems, and the signed policy contains no exclusionsâŠ
AXA doc.pdf (1.2 MB)
Edit: I think their logic was - âthis is primarily a hospitalisation policy, and if your prior condition is unlikely to trigger a hospital stay, then weâre ok with it not being excluded from coverage.â
(AXA global healthcare.com)
Yes it was/is, looks like I misunderstood. 
For informationâŠ
AXA have just notified us that our private health insurance premium for 2 in our early sixties will be 3454⏠for 2025/26. This is a 7.5% increase (no claims having been made in the year), net of a 5% discount for a single annual payment.
Thanks for the update George.
Itâs good to know this because if I donât manage to get my husband into PUMA and my employer gets tired waiting and terminates his private insurance, something like AXA will be his only option.
I am gobsmacked at how difficult it is to join the SĂ©cu now. We both did it when we first arrived in France in 1997 and it didnât take long at all.
So far weâve submitted roughly 70 supporting documents.
Thatâs what we did way back when as new inactif immigrants. The amount of paper required was quite remarkable!
Am sort of kicking myself I didnât just put him down as British and flash his residence permit.
But itâs a titre de sĂ©jour spĂ©cial and sometimes theyâre more trouble than theyâre worth.