Health Insurance

The Universal Medical Coverage programme

The Universal Medical Coverage programme (CMU, couverture maladie universelle) extends eligibility for social security health insurance to low income people on the basis of legal residence in France.

In practice, CMU beneficiaries are of two kinds:

1. people who are not eligible for, or who have exhausted their rights to benefit (an increasingly rare situation, which still occurs however),
2. people on low incomes who have health insurance coverage, but cannot afford complementary coverage. The mechanism that applies in this case is the Complementary Universal Medical Coverage programme (CMU complémentaire).

For beneficiaries of the minimum guaranteed income (RMI, revenu minimum d'insertion) entitlement to the CMU is automatic. Overall, there are about 4.3 million CMU beneficiaries, mostly under the CMUC programme.