Is it too easy to fake national insurance in Luxembourg?

There are no plans to introduce a national insurance photo card according to the health minister, despite claims of fraudulent abuse of the health system.

Mars di Bartolomeo said that although such a card would mean tighter controls, systems currently in place were sufficient to combat fraud.

The minister was responding to a parliamentary question posed by deputy Xavier Bettel, who said that doctors and health professionals were increasingly reporting cases of social security fraud.

Mr Bettel explained that the current national health insurance card does not allow doctors to check the identity of a patient because it does not carry a photo of the individual. As a result, treatments were being given to patients who do not have national health insurance, constituting an “abuse of the funds of the National Health Service by affiliated people who give their ID cards to non-members.”

Minister di Bartolomeo confirmed that such abuses occurred but were rare. This, he says, is because all medical staff are trained to verify the identity of a patient based on their health insurance card cross-referenced with a form of photo identification.

He said: “The range of provisions to avoid the fraud described by the member under law is quite extensive and only in cases where health care providers or services are not making identity checks provided by the statutes and conventions does fraudulent use of insurance cards become possible.”