"Hmmm, I've never had a case like yours"

My carte vitale didn't work the other day, so I stopped by my mutelle yesterday to see what the problem was. They said they couldn't do anything, so I had to go to the Caisse Primaire d'Assurances.

So I walked over there, even though my cute shoes were starting to hurt my feet, and eventually spoke with a nice women who explained that my card had been canceled. She looked up B's info and mine and started to fill out a form for me, but then realized that since I'm receiving unemployment payments from the education system (seeing as I was a part time language teacher last year) instead of the regular unemployment office for everyone else, that in fact I needed to go to MGEN, my old insurance company.

I raced home and grabbed the papers I needed and then hurried to the train station to get the car where B had left it, and got to MGEN before it closed.

A nice woman came out and spoke with me and made photo copies of all my papers. Apparently they annul the carte vitale for the foreign assistants at the end of their contract, except they shouldn't have for me since I started receiving unemployment benefits. But I left the country to reapply for the visa, which ends any benefits I might have. Except that I'm receiving unemployment and pacsed with a French guy.

The woman just called, so I'll go back to the Caisse Primaire today. It looks like things will turn out how I wanted them in the first place: I won't be covered by MGEN and I'll be added to B's account.

I did learn a lot about the whole system though. I was confused about why the Caisse Primaire existed before because I had always been covered by a student mutuelle or MGEN, which is for teachers, and I'd never needed to do anything over there. Come to find out, in those two catagories, LMDE (La mutelle des étudiants) and MGEN act as both the caisse primaire and the complement santé. Now that I'm neither student nor teacher, I go to the Caisse primaire like everyone else.

I also learned that the "carte vitale for life" is not true in my case, since I changed from student to teacher to regular old person. If you're never a fonctionnaire, I think you can keep your card for life, but not in my case. Apparently laws are changing as well and instead of having coverage 4 years after you lose your job, it will soon be 1 year. But on the bright side, they want to make a truly whole-life carte vitale, which should make things easier for everyone involved.