Excel file for health insurance comparison

Hello Raymond,

PASCALOU and PASLAGA are one and the same person. The former asks his question as a non-member, and after registering, he asks the same (or similar) question under his brand new member pseudonym.

Yes Raymond, I fully understand that it's a real challenge. But when all the mutual insurance companies tell you that the out-of-pocket costs are zero because we are retired, we know that's a big lie. And in order to compare at least 5-6 mutual insurance policies and potentially save a little money in these difficult times, I think I can manage to do something... If it only benefits me, that will still be better than reading all the fine print of each mutual insurance and possibly forgetting one or two important ones when the need for care (optical or dental) arises.

Today, for a couple of retirees, I pay over €150 per month, and for dental and optical care, it's almost nothing or nothing at all, and that's only once every two years....

Hello,

Regarding point 1, we don’t always have a choice; in the example that interested me, the insurance resulted from a collective agreement and, in practice, the negotiations—or more precisely, their absence—meant that there was never any competition and change; it was consequently mandatory except in recent years if the employee could demonstrate that they were covered in an equally mandatory way by that of their spouse.

From an economic standpoint, the costing was very difficult because it did not constitute an independent item but was included in a Benefits item comprising other benefits (sick leave supplements, death benefits...) itself divided into contributions in the brackets below and above the social security ceiling.
It was very uncompetitive in terms of optical and dental care, and very expensive for executives with few beneficiaries because its contributions were not fixed but based on a percentage of salary.
This was also historically the case for the national gendarmerie's mutual insurance, which was not mandatory: young mobile gendarmes, single without children and generally in good health paid a fortune and therefore left it because a tradition, often military, meant that their career elders frequently had a housewife (often due to the military's mobility leaving them no choice) and a large number of children.

The choice of one’s professional body’s mutual insurance is today less relevant in general; outside of dogma, it was mainly intended to reduce costs through the bargaining power of the number of members (this was historically the case, for example, with MAIF), but you will have all noticed while reading your third-party payment card or watching TV advertisements that almost all mutuals have now integrated into a few major groups that can be counted on one hand.

It remains for specific professions, probably the police as mentioned, likely the defense: no non-specific mutual will cover you for injuries or even simple illnesses incurred in an "external operational theater".

Regarding point 3, the waiting period is an economic weapon for insurers. It is a dogma of mutuals, which rightly consider that members do not mutualize anything if they only address the issue when they are old and/or sick, without having previously participated in that mutual effort.

But it can be perverse in the case of individual membership: in the case where, from a job with mandatory provident insurance, one would switch to another where the agreements provide for a mutual, mandatory or not, the question does not arise.
If, however, we migrate from the first situation or from an individual health insurer to an individual mutual, including because the new company has no mandatory mutual, the new mutual will theoretically apply this waiting period because the previous organization was not a mutual affiliated with FNMF.
This situation, acceptable in other cases, can be perceived as unfair by an employee who was previously a beneficiary of group insurance, who would not have chosen to prefer the mutual sphere from the outset.

The fluttering or nomadism, we can call it whatever we want, can be constrained in terms of insurance.
I knew the example of a young woman in perfect health who suddenly developed type 1 diabetes with no clear reason: even though most expenses were covered by long-term illness and thus escaped complementary coverage, the insurer terminated her the following year.

In terms of mutual insurance, and even if one does not see the interest other than commercial or if one does not maintain good relations with a particular representative, the situation is without consequence because, unlike an insurance policy, a mutual cannot exclude you due to your state of health or refuse to cover events that it considers to have occurred prior to the contract.