Disability rating

The Concours médical's indicative scale, in its 2001 edition, is the reference most French contracts use to rate disability. A disability rating puts a figure on what a person has lost, and the hard part is that it combines two very different quantities. Functional impairment measures physical or mental damage against a reference medical scale, whatever the occupation. Occupational impairment measures the concrete hindrance in the work actually performed: the same injury weighs heavily on a surgeon and lightly on an accountant. Most French protection contracts cross the two through a table or a formula weighted toward the functional side. The aim is that retraining into another occupation cannot by itself erase the cover. The result then goes onto a ladder of thresholds: below a first threshold nothing is due, between that threshold and a second the annuity is paid pro rata, and above it the annuity is full. The rating turns a medical judgment into a sum of money under a rule written in advance. Without that rule, every file would become a negotiation and every refusal a lawsuit.