I am , I confess , a little self indulgent and am no longer as light as I was when I got married nor is my waist the same measurement.
As a consequence of this indulgence I take a certain number of tablets, under prescription, every month.
In Ireland a lot of the cost of these was covered by the Irish Drugs Payment Scheme , I was covered by this scheme for any amounts over €120 a month.
My tablets therefore cost me €1440 each year.

On one occasion as I was buying six months supply (for €720 ) from my chemist in Waterford he whispered into my ear that I was quite mad.
He told me that if I slipped across the border into Spain I could buy these drugs without prescription- just by producing the packet- for a fraction of this cost.
This it turned out was quite true.
Thereafter followed our three monthly trips to Spain where the cost of the same drugs , without subsidy, was about €75 , for a months supply.

Riddle me that Irish Pharmacists ?

However this was never intended to be a long term solution as, because we have a business here , we always intended to be legitimate and avail honestly of the excellent French Medical Services.

Having over the past year completed the necessary miles of forms , using enough paper to have taken out a whole rain forest , just last week I finally got my long sought after Carte Vitale which registers me into the French national health scheme.
This involves an automatic payment from our account into the French National Insurance scheme , roughly the same as the Irish PRSI.

On our accountant’s advice we also topped this up with a small medical insurance , about €60 a month for me.

On Wednesday , I paid my first visit to the doctor here . (Scary moment I confess, he had no English so we were on my French, however all went well)
He gave me my relevant prescriptions , demanded the standard fee (€23) apologetically but reassured me that the government would reimburse that into my bank account within seven days.

This morning I went to the chemist , produced my prescriptions and my medical card and my insurance documents to the pharmacist and was given all my drugs(embarrassingly my normal dose of aspirin is so small that here it comes in a box decorated by a laughing baby).
Then as I started rooting for money the smiling pharmacist assured me that “No I was completely covered, there would be nothing to pay, now or ever ”

I gather that we are also (at least partly ) covered for the dentist and for the optician.

You do the maths , free doctor , free medicine, and other help besides.
It seems that this is a great country for old men.