Peculiariaties of French medicine
May 9th, 2007 | 
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You might think that medical treatment in France would be pretty much the same as it is elsewhere in the world once you get to the point of visiting the doctor, but it isn’t.
Certainly there are the obvious differences in how the various healthcare schemes are run. So, in the UK everything is free but there are waiting lists. In France, everything costs but there aren’t any waiting lists.
Expectations of the patients are quite different too. For example, because the French like to come away from the doctor with something after their visit, the number of medicines prescribed is massive. James had bronchitus last year and in the UK he’d have had a single bottle of medicine yet in France he ended up with that bottle plus tablets plus an inhaler plus appointments at the physiotherapist. Did he get better faster though? Well, no, so there wasn’t really any point in all the additional treatments.
The doctors have no consideration of any modesty that you might have either so almost always it’s “strip off, yes, everything” which is something to bear in mind. Such differences have resulted in there being training sessions for doctors in areas with a high brit expat population.
I wonder though if Doctor Bobo realises that his potential brit clientele is a good deal smaller than it might be if he didn’t advertise himself as a clown?
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Interesting post, Arnold. I was told (by the French, of course) that France has the best health-care system in the world.
You are the second person who told me about the stripping down before a check up, no matter what the problem is. That is very, very strange and would probably be enough for me to steer clear of French doctors. It’s not because I am a prude, but there is a matter of dignity, non?
As far as the medicines, in the US more doctors are not prescribing anti-biotics as much as they used to. There has to be a clear indication of infection before they would write a prescription. If it is just a virus, you are sent home with a pat on the back and a bill for about $75 to $100 (if you don’t have insurance).
I think in the US, our health care is great…our “health care system”, i.e. insurance and medicare is horrible. I feel confident in our doctors, not so confident that we can sustain the corruption of the insurance industry. Often times it is the insurance company that decides how long a patient can stay in the hospital, not the doctor. I had a doctor who dropped the insurance company that I was using because of this. We had to wait about 6 months before we were able to change our Insurance Company because we had a contract with them. In the meantime, we paid the doctor out of pocket for his services, since we really didn’t want to lose him. He was/is a great doctor.
I’ve also heard from an American friend of mine that he was treated very badly by the French doctors when he was living in France because he was an American. They didn’t realize he could speak/understand French and they said a lot of nasty things about him when they thought he couldn’t understand them. Very unprofessional in my view.
I’ll just have to make sure I’m healthy before visiting France!
Anti-biotics are the one thing that they don’t prescribe wholesale. What you get are, usually, a lot of medicines that would be over the counter drugs elsewhere. The physiotherapy also seems to be very popular though by far the most unusual thing is that you can be prescribed a break to a spa (which is reimbursed by the insurance!).
Health insurance in the US is just a mess I think. The complete opposite is the UK where everything is “free” which is also a bit of a mess due to the waiting lists. It’s an area where France has very nearly got it completely right by being mid-way between totally private and totally state run health insurance. The one thing I would change is that I’d bar people from getting 100% insurance as that feeling of it being “free” is bound to cause trouble at some point.
If you think the French doctor treatment was bad, what about the restaurant locally (quite dependant on tourists of course) which openly criticised the brits for buying houses in the village right in front of two who are fairly fluent French speakers? Net effect is that we tell people not to go there as do others in the area.
Oh, no. France is probably one of the best places in the world in which to be sick! Just make sure you have the insurance as America doesn’t have a reciprocal agreement with France re healthcare.