At the beginning of last year, it was not so well ordered when it comes to participating in the “Paiement Immédiad Direct” (PID). Many doctors persistently refused to recognize the newly introduced system of direct accounting in September 2023, as has existed in similar forms in our neighboring countries for decades. Direct immediate payment (PID) offers the doctor the opportunity to receive the amount of the amount covered by health insurance directly from the CNS. The CNS is transferred immediately, so that the doctor receives the corresponding amount in his bank account within a few seconds. At the same time, the insured, his patient, no longer has to run after his money in order to get his share back after he has taken in advance with the entire bill.
Also because the Medical Association of AMMD was crossed, the installation of the system was very slow in the country’s medical practices, to the patient’s dismay. In many cases, there were so far from abroad, especially from abroad who have settled and accepted the system directly. From the only around a hundred doctors who had worked with the new system at the beginning of 2024, according to a response to a parliamentary request from MP Mars di Bartolomeo to Health Minister Martine Drez until September 2024, 12 months later, just under 500. Listen a lot first.
In her answer from Tuesday to the request, the minister explained that the spread of the PID was now around 60 percent. Some will ask themselves whether they actually only spoke only in the remaining 40 percent of the doctors because the PID is still high in everyday patient life. In addition, invoices for, for example, X-ray examinations or consultations of doctors in clinics have to be extended almost exclusively from their own pocket in order to then run for the proportion of insured persons for weeks and months. Probably that whose reimbursement in the four-digit euro area for a tooth crown does not get stuck in the CNS system for months, because such cases have already been. The insured person is not a supplicant, which would have to understand that people work significantly more in the system.
After all, Minister of Health Deprez announced in her answer that they continue to work to bring PID to the clinics and that since July 1, 2025 “everything” has been done in order to provide “most doctors” the needed tool. Working is then only dependent on two factors: the correct software version in the respective practice and the goodwill of the doctor, of which quite a few were vehemently opposed when the system was introduced.
The question therefore remains why this system was not legally enforced at least in terms of general social interest on a broad front at least where it could be installed immediately. Instead, insured persons had to deal in addition to their health problems, also to take appointments at CNS branches in order to apply for a transfer if they did not want to wait for eternal refunds forever.
What benefits this country use and state-of-the-art diagnostic or treatment technology if people do not see themselves able to go to the doctor if necessary because they have to fear for the reimbursement of their share for months? In the Middle Ages, the Bader accepted only flashing coins, in 2025 this should be history.
