In the end, I decided to conduct a door-to-door search at the hotel, and the first person who answered had a toilet bag stuffed with the full hypochondriac’s selection of cures for everything from headaches to cholera, and gave me enough painkillers to tide me over till the Monday.
And on the Monday, I went to see my wonderful, fully refundable, state-system dentist, whose surgery is straight out of a sci-fi movie. There are some things it’s hard to complain about.
Special Treatment
Despite new restrictions as to which specialists the French can go and see without a referral from their family doctor, it is still very quick and easy to get an appointment with people who would be kept hidden behind walls of bureaucracy in Britain.
Women go directly to a gynaecologist for the Pill or a check-up, and children can have specialist paediatricians as their regular doctors. Outside a hospital like the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, the specialists are listed on a noticeboard, with the telephone number of their surgery. If a GP prescribes a visit to any of the specialists at a hospital, the appointment will often be given within days.
This does have a downside. I once had a sinus problem, and a friend recommended a ‘merveilleux’ ear, nose and throat man. I went along to his surgery, a posh apartment in the west of Paris, and walked into a modern art gallery. A car salesman in a flash suit arrived, took me into his designer-catalogue office, tapped around on my face with his gold-laden fingers, and asked me whether I was free for the operation at his clinic two days later.
He misinterpreted my shocked silence. ‘It’s all refundable,’ he said.
I said I’d think about it, and he gave me an insurance man’s business card and told me to call him as soon as I’d made my mind up. In the end, I took the English way out, bought a nasal spray, and saved the French state thousands of euros. They really ought to offer me a seawater spa weekend to thank me.
Vive la Différence
The differences between what you can expect from the British and French national-health services in the case of various common ailments:
A COLD
FRANCE: Call your doctor, get an appointment for the next day, or maybe even the same day. Go to a small private-looking apartment, and wait in what looks like a living room with an abnormally large number of magazines on the coffee table. Look at the fashion pages of a recent Elle or news magazine. Be welcomed personally by the doctor, who comes to fetch you, probably just a few minutes late if he or she is not an especially popular or inefficient practician. Explain your problem, have your throat examined, your ganglions felt, your temperature taken with a thermometer pressed on the forehead or in the ear (the days of the rectal probe are gone, much to the chagrin of some). Listen while your doctor tells you the Greek names for sore throat and runny nose (which all the French know). Watch him or her write out a prescription for aspirin, throat pastilles, nasal spray, chest rub, tablets for a steam inhalant, antibiotics in case things get worse, and (probably only on request these days) suppositories. Ask for, and receive, a three-day sick note. Pay the doctor by cheque, and leave the surgery, shaking the doctor’s hand, promising to return if the cold doesn’t clear up in the next few days.
Go to a pharmacy, get a rucksack full of medicine, watch the pharmacist swipe your social-security card21 so that your refund is credited automatically. Go home, have an aspirin and a hot drink and wait for the cold virus to go away naturally. In the case of recurring snuffles, request a stay at Aix les Bains health spa.
BRITAIN: Call the doctor’s surgery, be told that there are no appointments free for the next week and to call back in forty-eight hours if you’re not cured or dead. Go to the supermarket, buy a medicated drink, go to work and sneeze all over workmates. In the case of recurring snuffles, try acupuncture.
BACKACHE
FRANCE: Two choices. One: go to an osteopathic doctor, who will give one very costly session of treatment that will be refunded by the state because it counts as a diagnosis. In some cases this will cure the problem. Two: go to the doctor and request a course of physiotherapy. Get a prescription for twenty sessions. Find a physiotherapist, go to his or her apartment once or twice a week for massage and exercises, pay (an admittedly large sum) at the end of the twenty sessions and wait for the refund to be paid into your bank account. If the problem is more serious and requires an operation, it will be performed within a month, either at a state hospital or a private clinic. In both cases, most of the cost will be refunded by the state.
BRITAIN: Two choices. One: after finally getting an appointment with the doctor, listen to him or her prescribe rest and painkillers and, if the problem persists, make a return visit to arrange a one-off session with a physiotherapist at the local hospital who might be free in six months. Two: find your own physiotherapist, osteopath or acupuncturist, who may or may not be qualified. Spend a fortune and hope for the best.
OLD AGE
FRANCE: Visit several doctors (all of them refundable), have a nice chat, get prescriptions for hormone-replacement pills, the latest anti-rheumatism and anti-arthritis drugs, sleeping tablets, food supplements and two weeks at a spa (all of them refundable). Go to the electricity, gas and water companies to confirm with them that it is illegal to switch off your supply even if you never pay the bill. Inform your
