A letter from Ameli (French Health Insurance)

27 October 2022, by Cancer Rose
Updated December 2022

Dear Sir or Madam,

Your attending physician plays a central role in prevention actions. Depending on your situation, he can inform you and answer your questions about organized screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer, which can save lives. The earlier these cancers are detected, the better the prognosis.
To help your doctor in his mission of providing health advice to his patients, the Health Insurance will provide him with the list of his patients concerned by these screenings and who have not completed them (1).
Under the provisions relating to personal data protection, you have until December 1, inclusive, to oppose this transmission via the following link: https://www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/commencer/declarer-mon-opposition.
If you make your objection after December 1st, your request will not be considered for the first available list but will be considered for future lists.
Your situation could mean that some of these organized screenings do not apply to you; in this case, please disregard this message.

Please be assured of our attention and availability,
Your Health Insurance Correspondent

This is the letter that everyone has received from their Health Insurance.

Remember that during the citizens' consultation, the Health Insurance Institution's simplistic communication was criticized; read pages 95 and 96 of the citizen consultation on breast cancer screening report.
It cannot be stated that communication is more advanced in 2022, leaving any opportunity for reflection or doubt.

In this email, it is claimed that these screenings save lives. However, there is no scientific evidence, no study given, no justification, and no single reference. The message notifies you that your attending physician will be informed of the screenings you have not yet completed...
Ideally, one would hope that this approach would encourage discussion with the family physician about the relevance of screening, leading to a consultation that would result in a shared decision and information that would allow an informed choice. But what about in real life? One of our readers correctly asks if this will not instead allow putting a little more pressure on patients to participate in screenings that are losing momentum rather than an informed decision consultation if the health insurance institution itself starts with the presumption that screenings save lives, which is far from reality. There is little communication about the scientific challenges still rising regarding the true relevance of screening and its harms. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].

The user who receives this email must activate the rejection; hence, if he does not click on the link allowing him to oppose, his acceptance is activated by default.

This initiative appears to be a part of the larger European plan to increase European population participation in various screenings, despite many scientists' requests for better information on the benefit-risk balance of these health programmes.
The target is for 90% of EU citizens to participate in colorectal, breast, prostate, and cervical cancer screenings by 2025.

The new French 10-year plan states (https://www.e-cancer.fr/Institut-national-du-cancer/Strategie-de-lutte-contre-les-cancers-en-France/La-strategie-decennale-de-lutte-contre-les-cancers-2021-2030):

“Improving access to screening will be strengthened.”

"It will be a matter of better understanding the determinants of reluctance to screening and simplifying access to screening (direct order, diversified health professionals, mobile teams in particular). Approaches will be developed that offer screening after a preventive intervention or unscheduled care.

For example, partnerships with food aid organizations will be considered to carry out awareness-raising efforts, particularly among the most disadvantaged. First, contact information tools for health, medical, and social workers will be provided, and mobile applications with information and reminders will be developed. To encourage people to participate in screening, material incentives will be tested. Finally, screening age limits will be reconsidered. "

The financial incentives specified in the text allow for the recruitment of the most economically disadvantaged people, again disregarding any medical knowledge, as was denounced in an article in the BMJ, whose one of its authors is a French citizen[6]. For these more vulnerable persons, the consequences of abusive screening can be dramatic, resulting in impoverishment, loss of income, and difficulty getting jobs.
The problem of these underprivileged people is much more the access to care than finding unnecessary cancers that would never have harmed them. It is also a problem of good medical information and fight against risk factors to which they are more exposed.

But sometimes, too much is the enemy of the good. With the other screenings of the European plan that are going to be added with new invitations, reminder letters, mobile applications, and increased medical consultations, the effect obtained could be the opposite: a weariness of the population, already more and more distrustful of medical injunctions, and who will turn away, as it is already the case, from traditional medicine that is more and more coercive and harassing.

Enough is enough.

Update December 2022

https://www.ameli.fr/medecin/actualites/depistages-organises-des-cancers-envoi-aux-medecins-traitants-de-listes-de-patients-eligibles

The summum is reached in a communication dated November 23, 2022, in which doctors are explicitly asked to incite their patients to undergo screening.

In addition to the ROSP system (remuneration based on public health objectives, which is already highly questionable and contested), the Assurance Maladie (French National Insurance) wishes to strengthen the role of primary care physicians in inciting screening by using lists of patients who are eligible but have not participated in screening.

"The effectiveness of these screenings has been demonstrated because the earlier cancers are detected, the better the prognosis: they save lives," they write in their letter.

This is inaccurate, incomplete, and unethical in its deliberate silencing of the harms and risks of screenings, for which the citizen consultation requested clear information for women. The EU Council has recently reaffirmed and reiterated this demand for transparent information.

The Health Insurance views the doctor as a simple inciting player for patients who are listed and are not compliant with the screening; the comprehensible information requested by the citizens, which is the primary responsibility of the attending physician, is thus buried, and informed consent is a utopia....

Communication text :

Organized cancer screenings: lists of eligible patients sent to attending physicians

November 23, 2022

At the beginning of December, the Assurance Maladie (French National Health Insurance) will mail to attending physicians a list of their patients who have not had cancer screening (cervical cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer) within the recommended intervals.

Based on the double observation that France lags behind its European neighbors in terms of participation rates in organized screenings and that these have stagnated since 2018, Assurance Maladie wishes to strengthen the role of attending physicians in inciting screenings by providing them with a list of their eligible patients.

These screenings have demonstrated effectiveness because the earlier cancers are detected, the better the prognosis: they save lives.

The crucial role of general practitioners in screening participation has been demonstrated both in France and abroad. Because of their privileged relationship with their patients, doctors can incite them to undergo these screenings and answer their questions during a consultation.

To facilitate the execution of this public health mission, the list made available to attending physicians includes their patients who have not participated in the screenings for which they are eligible, according to the recommended intervals, whether within the framework of organized screenings or an individual approach.

These are:

- women aged 25 to 65 for organized cervical cancer screening ;
- women aged 50 to 74 for organized breast cancer screening;
- women and men aged 50 to 74 for organized colorectal cancer screening.

Please note: despite all the attention paid by Assurance Maladie to the targeting of the insured persons on this list, it is possible that some of them are not concerned (specific follow-up, recent screening, etc.). Some patients may have expressed opposition to being included on these lists.

References

[1] https://cancer-rose.fr/en/2022/09/13/the-risks-of-screening-an-elephant-in-the-room/

[2] https://cancer-rose.fr/en/2021/02/11/parallel-to-breast-screening-prostate-screening-overdiagnosis-as-well/

[3] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2208375

[4] https://cancer-rose.fr/en/2021/02/01/overdiagnosis-of-thyroid-cancer-another-womans-concern/

[5] https://cancer-rose.fr/en/2021/02/24/being-a-woman-and-smoking-x-rays-in-perspective/

[6] https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-065726

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