Top-up health insurance 'mutuelle' in France

Using the comparison sites my suggestion is to use a disposable email address (auto-forward to your real address if poss), because you will be receiving dross emails by the bucketload for evermore

That's good to hear! x

Read a previous article of yours when Fabien and his company was mentioned. Fabien is currently in contact with us and he is sorting out our health insurance for us. Thank goodness as it is a minefield.

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I can only hope that none of you experience serious injury or illness. However, should you do so, believe me, having medical cover from a Mutuelle back up is very re assuring. I've related my experiences before, but briefly, my wife had to have both knees replaced with prosthetics last year following an accident. I followed that with a heart attack, and two weeks after major heart surgery, i suffered a ruptured gastric ulcer. The result was a total of 8 operations for me. Whilst i realise these experiences have been extreme, can you imagine the costs involved ? They are astronomical. It has cost us nothing apart from our URSSAF payments of 750 euros per year, and our mutuelle insurance payments which amount to about 1000 euros per year. Yes, to many that is a lot of money, including me. Especially as my only income is a pension. But to have had to have paid for the treatment, and follow up care at home, would have been impossible during my lifetime. I am insured with Pacifica, through my bank, Credit Agricole. They have been, and continue to be first class. I receive statements to show what they have paid me, so i can check against my bank statements. They have been efficient and always pay quickly. Obviously this a personal experience, but the consequences of not having mutuelle do not bear thinking about. Fortunately, because of the care we have had, we are both near to fully recovered, and healthier than we have been for years, although we were not aware of the problems we had. I strongly advise everyone to ensure you have mutuelle, whoever you decide to insure with. (Incidentally. As an example of charges you can be faced with. One night in Tulle hospital for a temporary kidney stone problem, treated with drugs. 1,440 euros.)

Hope that you feel well now.

Which co are you with for your muetelle?

Thank you Barbara. We are both much better. We are with Pacifica. All the arrangements were made through my bank, Credit Agricole which has made life much easier. If i have any queries, the bank deal with it for me. Although i am sure you can obtain cheaper mutuelle, their service has been great. It also probably helps, that my car and house insurances are also with Pacifica. But they have sent payments to my bank twice, when they have REDUCED my premiums. (All paid monthly) No prompting or requests from us either. I cannot fault my bank or insurance company.

Health Mutuelles are basically a swindle.

We had a 'courtier' who came - took our details - went........he then sold all his contacts to all the Mutuelles who wanted to buy them and we, like probably 100's of others, ended up with 5 Mutuelles screaming for money, some quite nasty.

It is ILLEGAL to have more than 1 Health Mutuelle so we finally got a different courtier to come and she is still sorting it out!

I can't give any tips because the dishonesty of an individual is not seeable in advance, just do not take any old one and only one - all the others just ignore!

Yes, indeed, Ian M. I am still being harassed by MIEL who have called in the bailiffs and threaten to take me to court. My new Mutuelle have managed to "unblock" my carte and advise me to ignore phone calls and emails and threatening letters.

I suggest you get in touch with Fabien. He is scrupulous and reliable. We use his services whenever we can.

500€ ambulance ride??? I don't have a mutuelle and I paid around 30 euros for an ambulance ride from a somewhat nearby hospital. The attendant even helped me up the stairs. Since I am 70+ a mutuelle would cost me 70+ euros per month. Do you live far from the hospital? Even so. As for doctor visits, normally once a month, my kindhearted gp charges me 7 euros/visit BECAUSE he knows I don't have a mutuelle. Don't pay much over sĂ©cu for the 4 medications I need either. Don't know if it's pertinent, but I am a US person living in a Paris banlieu.

Don't confuse mutuelle and profit making top-up health insurance which is often referred to as a mutuelle as shorthand: a real mutuelle doesn't make a profit, but a top-up from an insurance company like Allianz (seeing it was mentioned) is meant to produce profits for shareholders. My mutuelle is the MGEN and it is a real mutuelle.

Yes but it is for Civil Servants and civil teachers (:-) ) n'est ce pas?

yes but there are plenty of others which are true mutuelles, VĂ©ro gave an example of one of them, that's all ;-)

Mine is le refuge mutualiste aveyronnais which is open to everyone and no you don't have to live in the aveyron to use it!

Yes, the MGEN is for people involved in education (the clue is in the last 2 letters, E-ducation N-ationale) but there are lots of others, I just don't know what they are called.

Just a quick update. As I’ve said before ( and no doubt I will say it again!), Fabien is excellent and provides brilliant service. You can get hold of him here.

We recently had a huge orthodontics bill that hadn’t been refunded quickly enough for my liking so I gave him a call. He was on the phone immediately to our insurer and the money was in my account by the end of the day. James has also just had several 100 euros worth of dental work done, all of which has been refunded thanks to Fabien’s care and attention in finding us the right policy for our needs.

Hi Catharine and everybody. Been AWOL for a while now so still trying to figure out the new format, and hope this post is in the right place!

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I recently changed mutuelle and my new mutuelle Pacifica through CA du languedoc sent off the resiliation form on my behalf. In August I received two sets of paperwork. The old company hadn’t acted on the resiliation which had been sent LRAR. I contacted CA and they send me proof of receipt which I then forwarded onto the agent of my former mutuelle. They didn’t acknowledge the error but a few weeks later a cheque reimbursing the payment from August came back to me. I later received letters saying the new Mutuelle couldn’t update the record for my carte vitale because it was still locked down by the previous company so they sent me a bunch of letters to send off asking them to unblock the informatique! It certainly seems we should all diarise our renewal dates and make sure we have LRAR sent and keep the slip somewhere safe as they companies do seem to take a while to act and make mistakes which cost us a fortune in the short term since the Mutuelle is probably one of our highest expenses after our mortgage.

500€ is a quite expensive but a ‘regular ride’ has not to be confused with an emergency ride which usually involves a different kind of ambulance, mostly because of the equipment for life support and all. What is important to know is that most of this services are managed by private companies so there is no ‘grid’ for fees which may end up on some occasions with astronomical fees to be paid.

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Morning VĂ©ronique, mutuelle DO make a profit like private top-up health insurances. It’s true that there is a difference in the global refund but the offers vary as well. To be faire, mutuelle have a refund rate of 70% and top-ups 60%. From my experience, the main difference I see is that mutuelle are usually better for ‘entry price’ cover but top-up have a far wider range of options so as soon as you have a specific care you’d like to pay attention to, then it’s highly likely that there is a top-up that can be customised to match that specific need and you will end up being more covered despite the statistics (ask @james & @cat about that, they are with a private top-up and I’m sure they are refunded much more than 60% ;-)).

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