What a French consulate requires for the long-stay visiteur visa

If you are an American moving to France to retire, your first paperwork hurdle is health insurance. The consulate will not issue the visa without it, and the policy has to meet a specific standard that catches a lot of applicants off guard. Here is what they are checking for.

VLS-TS visiteur, not a retirement visa

France has no dedicated retirement visa. Americans retire on the long-stay visitor visa, the VLS-TS visiteur. You prove income at least equal to the net SMIC, which is €1,477.93 a month in 2026, you commit not to work in France, and you hold private health insurance covering the whole period of stay. The VLS-TS is issued for up to a year, depending on your situation, and then renews as a carte de séjour.

What covering your stay actually means

The consulate wants comprehensive medical cover for the full validity of the visa it issues, with a start and end date that match. That means inpatient care, outpatient care, emergencies and repatriation. A policy that lapses halfway through, or that only pays out on short trips, will not satisfy the requirement.

Travel and nomad policies that fall short

Travel insurance and Schengen policies are built for short visits, so they carry trip-length limits, large deductibles, or annual caps that do not match a year of residence. The same goes for travel-style “nomad” products aimed at short stays. One wrinkle: some providers sell a proper international health plan alongside their travel cover, so check which one a quote actually is before you rely on it for the visa. The €30,000 minimum people cite online comes from the short-stay Schengen rules. France-Visas does not set one euro minimum for the long-stay visitor visa, although some visa centres list it in their instructions, so check the personalised checklist for your country. What matters is that the cover is comprehensive and runs for the whole stay.

Why American retirees need private cover first: the Medicare gap

Many Americans who retire to France are 65 or older and covered by Medicare at home, and the natural assumption is that this coverage carries over. It does not. Whatever your age, the cover for your first stretch in France is a private policy you buy for the visa. For the tax treaty, income proof and the overall path, read the full guide to retiring in France as an American.

Does Medicare work in France?

Almost never. Original Medicare generally does not pay for care you get outside the United States. The exceptions are narrow: certain emergencies near the U.S. border, care on a ship within six hours of a U.S. port, or a case where a foreign hospital is closer than the nearest U.S. hospital that can treat you. None of that helps you live in France. So turning 65 and holding Medicare at home does nothing for your consulate file or your day-to-day care in Lyon or Nice.

Keeping Part A and B or dropping it

Whether to keep paying Part B premiums once you live abroad, or drop them and re-enroll later, is a U.S.-side decision with its own penalty rules, and it depends on your plans to return or visit. We keep that light here on purpose. If you want to work through how Medicare and your U.S. coverage fit a life abroad, that belongs on Settleguru. For France, the practical rule is simple: you need a visa-valid French or international policy for year one regardless of what you do with Medicare.

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What a visa-valid policy must include (checklist)

Before you pay, run the quote against this list. The first points are what the visa actually calls for; the rest are precautions that make the file stronger and the policy safer to buy.

What the visa requires:

• Comprehensive medical cover, including inpatient, outpatient and emergency care, plus repatriation.
• Cover that runs for the full validity of the visa, with start and end dates that match.
• Documentation the consulate can read, in French or English.

Precautions that help:

• A written statement from the insurer that the policy meets the French long-stay visa requirement. No national rule demands that exact wording, but it saves questions at the counter.
• A low or no deductible. A large one can weaken the file and leaves you paying more out of pocket on a claim.
• Clear cancellation terms, including a refund if the consulate refuses the visa, and confirmation that paying monthly still covers the whole stay rather than month to month.

Ask the insurer to clarify any missing cover before buying.

What a policy costs in 2026

Premiums for comprehensive expat and international cover vary a lot by age, and honest numbers depend on the specific insurer, so we would rather point you to live quotes than print a figure that goes stale. What we can give you is the official 2026 cost context that explains why a policy is worth having and what the public system later leaves you to pay.

Price by age bracket

Expect to be quoted by age band, and expect the bands for people in their sixties and older to cost materially more than cover for someone in their forties. The exact bands and the maximum entry age depend on the insurer: some will not take a first-time applicant above a set age at all. Check the entry-age limit before requesting a quote.

What drives the premium over 65

Age is the main lever, followed by how pre-existing conditions are handled and how high a deductible you accept. Here is what the French system itself charges in 2026, which is the gap a policy and later a mutuelle have to fill:

These figures are from ameli.fr and are current in 2026; the hospital daily charge rose to €23 on 1 March 2026. The forfait journalier is not reimbursed by the public system, which is one reason people keep a mutuelle even after they join PUMa.

The bridge to PUMa and when you can drop private cover

Private cover is the first step, not the only one. Once you are settled, you move onto France’s public health system, and you keep private cover until your public coverage starts. For the fuller walkthrough of joining France’s public health system after you arrive, see the healthcare section of our full retirement guide.

The residence requirement

PUMa (Protection universelle maladie) covers anyone who works or resides in France in a stable and regular manner. Stable residence is checked as at least six months of presence over the last twelve. In practice, non-working newcomers are generally affiliated after about three months of stable, regular residence, which is why visitor-visa holders can move from private cover onto PUMa partway through their first year. Affiliation is not automatically free, either: residents without earned income can owe an income-based contribution, though people living on a pension are usually exempt.

The Carte Vitale timeline

Affiliation and the Carte Vitale do not arrive overnight. You file your request with your local CPAM, using its affiliation form (the S1106), and the office asks for proof of stable residence and other documents. The card itself can take months. What matters for your private policy is the date your coverage actually opens, not the day the plastic card lands. Keep your private policy running until that date is confirmed. Letting it lapse on the assumption that the public system is already in place is how people end up uninsured for a stretch.

Why you still want a mutuelle

PUMa does not reimburse everything. It leaves co-pays, the hospital daily charge and a share of many tariffs for you to cover. A mutuelle, the French top-up insurance, covers much of what PUMa leaves, though not every charge. Most residents on the public system carry one, and retirees are no exception.

The 2026 law on a PUMa contribution for visitor-visa holders

The final law differs from the original visitor-visa proposal, so here is where it actually stands. France’s 2026 Social Security Financing Law, enacted on 30 December 2025, created a new healthcare-contribution provision in the Social Security code (Article L160-1-1). During the parliamentary process the measure was presented as an annual contribution for non-EU long-stay visitor-visa holders, aimed at foreign retirees, Americans among them, who drop private insurance after a few months and lean on the public system (the amendment to the 2026 financing bill).

The amount and conditions are left to an implementing decree. As of November 2026 that decree had not been published, so there is no official euro figure to quote, and any firm number you see is an estimate. This also sits apart from the income-based contribution PUMa can already charge some residents, which is a separate question. We are watching the decree for any bilateral-treaty or S1 exemptions that could change who pays, and we will update this page when it appears.

Comparing visa-valid insurers the right way

A single insurer’s landing page is built to sell you that insurer, so it rarely lays out what the consulate actually wants. When you compare policies, hold each quote against the same points:

When we evaluate a provider, we check independent reviews and feedback from the 225,000-member Spainguru community, interview the provider, and look at years in business and how fast they answer. You can see the insurers the Spainguru network has vetted on the Services directory. It does not yet list a visa-valid France health insurer; for now it marks travel policies as not valid for a visa application. On a commercial topic like this, it is fair to ask how we are paid, so here is how Moving France stays independent: partners pay a listing fee or a commission, that never buys a place in the directory, and your price stays the same.

If you are also weighing Spain, the rules there are different, and our sister site covers how health insurance works for Spain’s residency visas.

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Frequently asked questions

Disclaimer: general information for Americans planning to live in France — not tax, legal, financial or immigration advice. Visa rules, thresholds and treaties change and depend on your situation; confirm with the French consulate, the relevant authority or a qualified professional before acting.