If you don’t want (or are ineligible to qualify for) healthcare protection from the country where you normally live, your situation depends on the country where you originally came from.

If you wish, you can register with a specific healthcare provider from your country of origin (when offered), but you will still pay and benefit from the local system.

You can find information (benefit packages and prices) on the web.

In the EU, you can ask to come back to your original country using the form E 112 (sickness, maternity) or E 123 (work accident) that can you get from the health office. You also can subscribe to a private mutual fund to protect people abroad (you will find the information in contacting any private insurance company).

All the hospitals will accept you for an emergency even if you don’t have a Social Security number. You can go to the emergency department, but as patients are see by order of emergency, if you are not covered in blood you should take a book.

Insurance number

In order to be eligible to the healthcare protection you must have a ‘numéro de sécurité sociale’ (social security number – e.g. 1 0569 110125 i.e. m/f mmyy number).

When you work, your employer must complete a declaration unique d’embauche and obtain the number for you. The document must be sent or faxed to the URSSAF, ‘Déclaration d’embauche’ department. In parallel, your employer will have to ask to register that document with your social security centre (he will get information by calling 01.5.38.70.70). This center will provide a temporary number, and later a definitive one.

In order to benefit from health insurance, the social security contributor must have made a minimum amount of contributions from their salary or have worked a minimum number of hours.

- If you have a regular income: You will make regular payments towards health insurance which are deducted monthly from your salary on a monthly basis. Your social security contributor’s card will be automatically renewed.

- If you do not have a regular income: Once a year you should send one or more payslips to your social security office to prove that you have worked at least 120 hours over a 3 month period.

- If you have recently been registered: You will benefit from a reduction in the cost of treatment during the first 3 months. For the following 3 months, if you are under 25, you must prove that you have worked 60 hours or earned a wage at least equal to 60 times the hourly SMIC (basic minimum wage) since starting work. You will benefit from payments in the case of illness, pregnancy, illness preventing you from working, accident at work or occupational disease, disability or death.

You will still benefit of the insurance during 3 years after you stop working for any time off.

If you don’t work, you will be eligible to the insurance if you are a relative of the insured person, married or equivalent, or living with the person for more than 1 year.

Everyone else is protected by the Couverture Maladie Universelle (universal healthcare protection) and you can ask information to the social security centre you are living next.

The general social security health insurance covers 4 out of 5 French for medical costs incurred due to illness, pregnancy, disability and death. Through a second plan it also covers for accidents at work and occupational diseases.

You will get two different documents to testify your insurance:

- a sheet of paper with your personal insurance details; - a Carte Vitale (insurance card - the size of your credit card and has an electronic chip, which contains all information relevant to the holder. Repayment is easier and quicker with the Carte Vitale).

You can contact the National insurance centre in Paris by telephone 36 46 or online with your login on ameli.fr:
https://assure.ameli.fr/

If you do not speak French, and need information about your French Health Insurance rights, call the special Advice Line for Englsih speakers on:

• 0 811 36 36 46
  from France (local call price from fixed-phone line)
  
• 0033 811 36 36 46
  from foreign countries (call rates vary between operators).

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