French Govt Battles With Health Budget

Health cost control has been at the heart of France's new finance bill for 1997, which has generated a nationwide debate on a variety of fronts.

The social action and health budgets together will rise 3.1% to 69.5 billion French francs ($13.54 billion). Within this total, the health allocation will fall 1.5% to 8.1 billion francs but, due to a lower wages bill, intervention credits will rise 4% and be used to fund major campaigns, eg against drug abuse (694 million francs, up 8.5%), AIDS, (474 million francs, up 5.3%) and alcohol/tobacco abuse (183 million francs). The drug agency's budget goes up from 67 million francs to 72.6 million francs ($14.1 million).