By There isn’t such a thing as a free lunch. In a striking reversal of long-held assumptions about Europe’s expansive welfare model, French lawmakers are now moving to curb free healthcare access for non-EU foreigners — a shift that mirrors recent U.S. reforms and underscores a political reality long argued by President Donald Trump: even the most generous systems eventually hit the limits of sustainability.
French parliamentarians have advanced legislation that would require retirees and other long-term residents from outside the European Union to pay into the country’s universal healthcare system, ending a practice that has allowed many wealthy non-EU foreigners to receive taxpayer-funded medical coverage for free after just three months in France, writes The Daily Caller. The proposal cleared two major legislative hurdles in November and would fall most heavily on American, British, Canadian, and other non-EU pensioners relocating on long-term visas.
Under current rules, non-EU residents who can show an annual income of at least €23,000 are automatically enrolled in France’s national health system after three months — at no additional cost. The new measure would close that door.
“It is a matter of fairness,” said François Gernigon, the center-right lawmaker sponsoring the reform, in an interview with Politico. “If you are a French citizen and you move to the U.S., you don’t have reciprocity, you don’t benefit from free social security.”
That sentiment — once politically taboo in Europe — now animates a growing acknowledgment that open-ended benefits for non-citizens are no longer financially or politically tenable. Gernigon noted that the new contribution expected from foreign retirees would still be modest compared to what American seniors typically pay for coverage. He also framed the change less as a deficit remedy than as a necessary signal of balance and responsibility: “This is not what is going to fill the hole in the social security budget.”
The French pivot comes only months after the United States implemented its own tightening of taxpayer-funded healthcare access. In July 2025, President Trump signed legislation barring many refugees, asylum seekers, and certain legal permanent residents from Medicare eligibility and Affordable Care Act subsidies, while reducing federal reimbursements to hospitals that treat undocumented patients in emergency rooms. At the time, critics argued the policy was uniquely harsh. France’s shift now suggests a broader Western recalibration — and, politically, a vindication of Trump’s claim that generous systems inevitably draw unsustainable demand.
France’s move also unfolds against mounting fiscal strain. The country carries one of the heaviest public-debt burdens in the developed world and spends roughly 23 percent of its GDP on pensions, welfare, and employment programs — a level exceeded only by Finland. Even undocumented migrants qualify for fully state-funded medical aid, a program costing taxpayers about €1 billion in 2022.
Efforts to trim these expenditures have ignited fierce resistance. Strikes and protests rolled through French cities throughout the autumn, with unions condemning the government’s austerity plans as a “horror show.” For decades, European leaders and commentators have cast their welfare states as both morally superior and economically more rational than America’s. But the new restrictions — alongside similar debates unfolding in other EU countries — reflect a growing recognition that Europe’s model, too, is confronting hard limits.
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