Ramsay Santé revelations find echo in French press

Mike Lewis, CICTAR researcher, presents findings on Ramsay Santé. © 2025 Georges Gomes - All rights reserved.

CICTAR’s latest report, co-authored with French union CFDT Santé-Sociaux, reveals how real-estate speculators are extracting €2.5 bn annually from the French health system. Mike Lewis, CICTAR researcher and co-author of the report, presented the findings to journalists and trade unionists at a press conference in Paris.

The report focuses on Ramsay Santé, one of France’s largest private hospital providers. It shows how Ramsay hospitals book persistent financial losses, while paying large rents to subsidiaries of Ramsay Santé itself, which book annual profits on these rents of between 40 and 60 percent. Meanwhile, Ramsay has created an internal company which receives sales commissions on purchases of supplies and services by all its hospitals and clinics. While costs of supplies for these scarcely profitable hospitals and clinics have risen significantly over the last five years, Ramsay Santé is booking annual profits of between 67 and 85 percent on these sales commissions.

The findings make no accusation of impropriety. As noted by major French financial paper, Les Echos, the report instead calls into question the increasingly financialised model of healthcare in France. Patients and workers loose out, through lower investment and smaller bonuses, while investors rake in the returns. The launched received coverage elsewhere in the business press, in investigative outlet Mediapart and l’Humanité.