Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years with her husband and two kids. Her daily life does not include romantic walks along the Seine, champagne picnics on the Pont des Arts, or five-star gourmet dinners. For a realistic take on life in a fantasy place, visit her blog, An American Mom in Paris.
Our troubles enrolling in the French health care system happened at the same time the health care reform bill was being angrily debated at home. If anyone from the States asked us how that dang socialist health care was treating us, we responded, "Fine."
We didn’t want to bemoan a system that, while not flawless, is certainly better than most. We were also afraid our frustrations would be used as ammunition at one of those town hall meetings where everyone yelled a lot.
French people are very happy with their health care system. They were therefore confused when an Obama is Hitler! poster made the front page of a French magazine. The French knew Hitler up close and personal and the French know universal health care. I don't think they got the connection. (I told as many who would listen that I don't know any Americans who got the connection, either.)
But this isn’t a diatribe on health care reform, or a serious article on how to construct a perfect health care system with a few rubber bands and a can-do attitude. It's also a waste of time if you're looking for a comprehensive overview of the French system, or really any type of insight whatsoever. It's just what happened to us.
We hadn’t even gotten our cable hooked up yet when I discovered I was pregnant. Getting pregnant moments after landing in Paris hadn’t been the plan but sometimes a bottle of celebratory French wine contributes to the complete forgetting of the plan.
I was suddenly, miserably afflicted with intense nausea and sensitivity to smells in the land of stinky cheese, cigarette smoke and open-air fish markets. I attempted to speak French but mid-sentence decided I didn’t care and laid down on the floor to sleep. Harshest of all, just a few weeks into our lives in France, I could no longer partake in two of my favorite French activities: eating odiferous unpasteurized French cheeses and drinking the very French wine that had been complicit in my becoming unable to drink it. Is that irony? I’ve never admitted this to anyone but I don’t know the difference between "irony" and "a big bummer."
We compiled the stack of paperwork necessary to enroll in the French health care system. The French health care system is rumored to be one of the best in the world but the French bureaucratic system is notoriously one of the worst. The notoriety is well deserved; enrolling in the health care system as a foreigner will cost you many handfuls of ripped-out hair, some of it your own.
Our Assurance Maladie application was canceled twice for unknown reasons. We received daily letters demanding documents we’d sent several times before. We’d send the documents again but would receive the same letters two weeks later. We would then rip the letters into tiny pieces with impotent rage.
Sometimes we tried to straighten it out in person only to find the office closed on days it was supposed to be open. We swore a lot and became hard. We weren’t alone in our frustration; a friend of ours once threw his bicycle at the front door of the Assurance Maladie office. He’d pedaled all the way there during a transportation strike to find it closed on an "Open" day for the third time.
While waiting for official enrollment in the system, we paid everything out-of-pocket, most of which would be reimbursed after our application was processed. Doctor visits weren’t expensive, between 40 and 100 U.S. dollars, so under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been a big deal. With the big-ticket "birth" item looming large, however, we were starting to sweat and collected a pile of precious family heirlooms to pawn if necessary.
About a month before the due date, we received notice our application had been approved but the applicant named "David" was missing some documentation. We were happy our application had been approved, but wondered who this "David" was who’d suddenly joined our family. Another phone call revealed the problem--our application had been approved under the wrong name.
While waiting for the paperwork to sort itself out, I found a great semi-English-speaking doctor and commenced prenatal appointments. I had never considered being a stripper before I got pregnant in France but when you’re in a French doctor’s office, you have little choice but to get familiar with the profession.
You chat for a little bit at the beginning of an appointment and then the doctor tells you to take off your clothes. You hesitate a bit before moving, waiting for him to leave the room or whip out a paper gown but he will continue to sit there. So you get up from your chair and start taking it off, trying not to be offended by the way the doctor yawns and looks around the room in boredom.
It’s a cruel stripping gig because when it’s over, you pay him. At my first visit to the baby doctor I hadn't even gotten my clothes back on when he had to rush off to a birth, so I wrote a check sitting in my underwear and thinking, "Huh. Different."
A few more visits gave me more practice and more confidence. By the third trimester I was stripping down in the hallway as I walked to the office, kicking off my shoes and giving the doc a quick nod on my way to the exam table. I’m going to give some nurse the shock of her life back in the States when she turns around to take my blood pressure and I'm sitting on the table naked with my checkbook in my hand.
Two weeks before the due date, we barged into the Assurance Maladie office with crazy eyes. Alex told me to "look as pregnant as possible" to emphasize the gravity of our situation. I didn’t have to try very hard before we were taken under the wing of a kind and concerned woman. She gave us just enough paperwork to avoid an out-of-pocket birth and we breathed for the first time in months. Our application was finally approved when our baby girl was four months old, well over a year since we’d begun the process.
Once you’re in the club, French health care is a delight. Now we adore getting sick and cheer when our four-year-old son necessitates another run to the ER. And we’re covered just in case another bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape finds its way into our mouths and we forget our "Only two kids for the love of God" plan.
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