Guide
What a doctor's visit costs in France: the state's own price list
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
The rule in writing
“For a long-stay visa (VLS-TS), you must hold private health insurance covering your full stay in France. Travel insurance and short-stay Schengen policies are not accepted.”
Official source: France-Visas (france-visas.gouv.fr) & FrenchEntrée long-stay guide — Last verified:
The tariff table, from Service-Public
France runs medicine on a negotiated national tariff, and the state publishes the consultation economics in one table. For a Sector 1 GP (the majority, charging the negotiated rate): consultation €30, reimbursement base €30, amount reimbursed €19 after deduction of the flat €2 participation. A consultation complexe — the longer, defined-situation visits — is priced at €47.50. Sector 2 doctors set their own fees: with the moderated-fee option (OPTAM) the base stays €30; with free fees the reimbursement base drops to €23, of which €14.10 comes back — the gap between an honoraires-libres bill and that €14.10 is yours.
Two system rules shape every number: reimbursement rates assume you follow the parcours de soins — the declared-GP referral pathway — and drop hard outside it (30% of tariff instead of 70%); and specialists run their own tariff lines above these.
Source: Service-Public.fr, remboursement d'une consultation médicale (F1069), read 29 August 2026.
What this means before you are in the system
The table above describes life inside French social security. A newcomer's first months run outside it: PUMa, the universal protection, opens after a qualifying period of stable residence, and until your carte Vitale exists the €30 leaves your pocket with nothing coming back from the state. That stretch is precisely what visa-stage private cover exists for — and France is the country that refuses travel policies for that role outright.
The practical sequence for a mover: private health cover carries the consultations of year one (a GP habit at €30 a visit is a knowable, insurable cost), PUMa registration follows residence, and after it the French pattern is the tariff table plus a mutuelle topping up the patient share. Where our plans fit is stage one — real outpatient cover for the pre-PUMa stretch — and the arithmetic is public on both sides: France's tariffs above, our rates by age, and what each tier actually buys, with outpatient consultations entering at the Standard tier.
60-second check
Not sure the policy you have meets your destination's written rule? Run it through the policy check now, before you build the rest of the file around it.
Check my policyReading French medical bills like a resident
The habits that make the system legible fast: ask a new doctor's sector before booking (Sector 1 = the tariff; Sector 2 = ask the fee); declare a médecin traitant immediately — the parcours de soins discount is the system's biggest lever and newcomers lose it by not filing one form; and read a bill as three layers — tariff, state share, patient share — because every French health document is built on that anatomy.
Against the wider map this site keeps: France's €30 sits between the Netherlands (GP care free at the point of use inside the compulsory system) and Ireland (no published fee at all, typically €60+ by the state's own savings arithmetic) — consultation economics differ more across our ten countries than almost any other line item, and the France hub holds the insurance rules that decide which side of these tables you start on.