In which we deal with things medical, part II

Thursday morning, Blaise went off before breakfast to have blood drawn, in the hopes that that would answer questions about what is going on. He came back just in time to take Sapphire and Ezio to school, and so we didn't get a chance to talk about how things had gone until after we had dropped all 3 kids off at school.

At that point, I looked at his reimbursement receipt (thus far, our healthcare experiences in France have required that we submit receipts for reimbursement to the French health insurance system, which we can't do until after we have our Carte Vitale), and realized that they had used his (dummy) Social Security number to bill the French health insurance system for their part of the payment. (A note of explanation: For most things medical, the French health system pays 70%, and the user pays 30%. That increases to 100% paid by the health system for serious or long term things (cancer, pregnancy, etc) or if you're sufficiently low income. Top up private insurance is available and widely used to cover the 30% the health system doesn't pay.) On the plus side, that meant that we didn't (yet) have to pay the full cost of the labs. (I suspect that there is a very good chance that we will have to cover the extra 70% and wait to be reimbursed by the health system once we finally have our Cartes Vitale.) On the minus side, we realized that our 30% is going to add up to a whole lot of money very quickly if we have very many more of these.

So, we decided that we needed to get the supplemental insurance, and quickly, since Blaise has another test lined up for Monday morning. Also, we needed to figure out, hopefully, some way that we wouldn't have to pay the entire cost of the test up front. (Particularly as we have absolutely no clue how much the entire cost of the test will be. It's hard to be wise consumers when you don't know the costs up front.) So Blaise started sending out emails, and looking online. I started looking online. (Unlike him, I don't have the right kinds of contacts here for dealing with this stuff.) As far as I could tell, everything required that you have a social security number. Blaise's contact suggested that we use our American social security to pay for the test. (Umm, no. That's not going to work.)

Finally I suggested that Blaise contact a woman in Nancy (Ann) who had been extremely helpful with getting things lined up before we got here, but had told him that he should work with her colleagues here in Paris once we arrived. (He hadn't contacted them because he didn't think they were very helpful when he tried to contact them when we were here two years ago. Basically it's a foundation that's set up to help foreign researchers navigate here in France.) He emailed Ann, and phoned the group here in Paris to see if there was anything they could do to help.

Friday morning, after he had dropped Sapphire and Ezio off at school, he headed into the city to meet with one of the people at this group. Together, they filled out the enrollment forms for the supplemental insurance. She sent an email to the OFII (the immigration office) to try to figure out why we have not yet gotten our medical exams. And she told us that we should go to the social security office to apply for our social security numbers, despite the fact that we don't yet have our actual Cartes de Séjour. In fact, she typed up most of the forms that we need to have filled out.

So, immediately after Blaise got home we ate sandwiches, and headed off for the local social security (CPAM) office. Where we successfully applied for Blaise's social security number. Mine was held up because we didn't have a copy of my translated birth certificate. (I think it got mixed in with my dossier at the sous-préfecture.) Sapphire's and Ezio's got held up because we needed a letter from their headmistress certifying that they were enrolled in and attending school. Cherry's didn't need to be held up (she isn't required to go to school), but it seemed easier to process it along with the other kids'.

We got home, and Blaise had a confusing email from Ann. After a phone call to her, he discovered that we are supposed to be covered, not under CPAM, but under MGEN, the branch of the health insurance system that deals with public employees in education, among other fields. Furthermore, we should have gotten paperwork from them back in July, and didn't. So he called the MGEN office (which is, unfortunately, located several suburbs and multiple train transfers away) and they agreed to mail us the paperwork that we need to fill out.

I'm still not exactly sure where this leaves us as far as medical expenses go. We know that we have coverage, but it isn't clear how long we might have to wait for reimbursement, or whether we'll have to pay the entire cost of Blaise's test Monday up front. I'm assured, however, that we'll love the insurance system once we manage to actually get through all the bureaucracy.