About.
An explainer desk for a system that runs on structure and numbers.
Carnet Santé explains how the French healthcare system actually works — who is covered, who pays, where your data lives, what is changing, and where the system still falls short.
The subject is famously opaque from the inside: a vocabulary of cards, caisses and contributions that everyone uses and nobody explains. We take it apart mechanism by mechanism, in plain language, with the numbers kept honest and sourced.
The reference is organised into five colour-coded sections — Access & Coverage, Funding & Costs, Records & Data, Innovation, and Gaps & Equity — plus three tools: the Chiffres page for the numbers, the Lexique for the vocabulary, and Sources for where it all comes from.
Who writes it
Entries are written and maintained by the Carnet Santé desk and reviewed against the public record before publication. How we work — and how the reference is funded — is set out in the Methodology.