The High Council for the Future of Health Insurance (Haut Conseil pour l’avenir de l’assurance maladie, HCAAM) has published a short explanatory note placing the French health-insurance deficit in the wider context of health expenditure, system financing and international comparison.
The note, La France dépense-t-elle trop pour sa santé ? (Does France spend too much on its health?), is the first issue of HCAAM’s new short-format series, Décryptages Santé (Health Insights). It says the health-insurance deficit, which HCAAM puts at almost €16 billion in 2025, reflects an imbalance between expenditure that France has chosen to socialise and the revenue allocated to health insurance.
HCAAM says total health expenditure gives a better view of system sustainability. On that measure, France remains a high-spending country, but it sits within the range of comparable high-income systems. In 2024, health expenditure was 11.4% of gross domestic product, placing France behind the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Per head, France ranked tenth worldwide at $6,110 in purchasing-power-parity terms.
The medicines section adds a more specific signal for access and expenditure debates. HCAAM describes a ‘normalisation’ of French medicines consumption after a period in which prescribing volumes were markedly higher than in neighbouring countries. Pharmacy-dispensed standard units fell by 12% between 2009 and 2022, while they rose by 30% in Germany, 8% in Italy and 22% in the Netherlands.
HCAAM also says France still has comparatively high use of antibiotics and anxiolytics. It adds that volume is only one component of cost, since France has tended in some therapeutic classes to use newer, more costly products more heavily than other countries.
The analysis provides an official reference point for French debates on prescribing behaviour, patient cost-sharing, efficiency savings and the sustainability of innovation within the health-insurance settlement. It also places medicines policy within a wider fiscal discussion that links expenditure control to the composition and quality of care, not only to headline spending growth.
Source: High Council for the Future of Health Insurance
Link: La France dépense-t-elle trop pour sa santé ? (Does France spend too much on its health?)
Date: 29 May 2026
