Visualize the increase in judgments-maladies, whose government intends to tighten the compensation rules

While the Prime Minister wishes to reduce health spending, this increase is part of a fundamental movement linked to the decline in unemployment and aging of the active population.

Maladies stops in the government’s viewfinder. While the Prime Minister intends to achieve 5.5 billion euros in health expenses as part of his public finance deficit control plan, the executive targets work stoppages, objects of a “derivative” According to the Prime Minister. Questioned by The worldSaturday, July 26, the Minister of Labor and Health Catherine Vautrin also recalled the will of the government of “put an end to abuses” in the matter. But how much did the number of work stoppages increase?

To answer this question, we must refer to a study published in December 2024 by the Ministerial Statistics Service in charge of Health and Social (DREES) and by the National Health Insurance Fund. This document explores the evolution in number and cost of the deputy judgments of private employees as well as contract workers from the public service, or around 21 million people. And the figures it contains attest to an overall upward trend. Compared to 2010, their number increased from 6.43 to 8.42 million, an increase of more than 30%, at a total cost of 10.2 billion euros in 2023.

These data show a surge in the number of judgments-maladies between 2019 and 2023, particularly marked among the youngest, according to study authors. But the acceleration measured during this period also extends the upward trend that preceded the Pandemic of Covid-19.

Several factors are advanced to explain this global trend. First of all, the number of people in employment has increased since 2010, which has mechanically had an impact in terms of number of stops. The authors of the study thus recall that salaried employment has progressed “Twice as fast during the recent period (+1.5 % per year in 2019-2023) than during the previous period (+0.8 % per year on 2010-2019)”. Another important explanation is to be sought in the aging of the active population, the stops that tend to lie with age. However, the share of 55-64 year olds in employment increased thanks to successive pension reforms, which increased the duration of subscription or postponed the legal retirement age (1993, 2003, 2010, 2014, 2023).

These demographic phenomena, combined upwards wages linked to inflation, are considered to be the main causes of the increase in expenses of arrest stops. “”The direct effect of economic (increase in wages) and demographic factors explains of the order 60% of the increase in expenses (daily allowances) disease between 2010 and 2023 “thus write the authors of the report. For the remaining 40%, they list several possible factors, starting with an increase in the loss, that is to say the recurrence of claims, that they deem “Difficult to explain”. DREES also points to the track of a degradation of working conditions. Unjustified judgments are finally given as a possible source of explanation, but only “partly”.