21st August 2011

The canicule continues - 40 degrees today and rising. And CPAM, the French bureaucratic health body, includes those my age as those at risk! However, whenever I think I've got the health system licked, something happens to confuse me yet again. From E106, E121, S1 - the forms go on for ever, including the sub-bodies like Secu, CMU.
But now I hear even the locals have trouble with it. M. Rolland from Argenteuil was told by his pharmacist that CPAM  wouldn't reimburse costs because the patient was 'dead'. Secu refused to believe the pharmacist, so M. Rolland and his wife marched into the CPAM offices themselves to sort them out. However, a few days later his pension fund wrote to 'the heirs of M. Rolland' asking for a death certificate. When he rang to protest, they told him to get a 'certificate of existence' from his mairie, who subsequently said such a thing didn't exist. The pension company then asked him to provide a copy of his birth certificate with a signed note to confirm he was still alive. All well and good until he made a chasing call and was told he'd died a few weeks ago!
Him indoors says I never See Pam anyway, and I don't get ill 'cos I'm on a seafood diet - when I see food I eat it...