Moving To France

I can't say for Metformin, but a friend has been in France for almost a year having retired early. His GP in the UK had been kind enough to prescribe his BP pills for 6 months and was happy to repeat if he had returned after 6 months. He was enjoying himself too much and was able to buy his BP pills in France fairly cheaply in his opinion.

Hi, I live in France permanently, but I am of state pension age. There are various sites including Angloinfo that give full details of healthcare here but basically you get into the French Healthcare system and then you should get what is called a Mutuelle which is a top-up health insurance. There are various companies who provide different types of cover at different rates. I get my prescriptions including metformin and, whilst I am not absolutely sure, I think the system here will provide such prescriptions free of charge (always providing you have the Mutuelle which you should not be without) even if you are not of retirement age. There is an agreement between Governments which gives reciprocal arrangements in relation to Healthcare
I have found the healthcare in France particularly good if bureaucratic
Bon courage

It's vital that you do check, you may need to have private insurance for a while. The French decided some years ago that people who were early retirees, (ie without a state pension) could not join the French healthcare scheme unless they had lived there legally for 5 years. To be legal you had to have health care coverage. It meant that early retirees had to take out private insurance and I have several acquaintances that had to do this (expensive).

After some complaints to the EU, the French have backtracked but getting into the system can take time and you may need to be covered for the interim period or else you won't be there legally and hence give the authorities grounds for refusal.
This is from an insurance company but as far as I know it is accurate at the moment . history, http://www.french-property.com/guid...s/health/getting-health-cover/early-retirees/
You might also want to ask on a French Forum such as http://services.completefrance.com/forums/completefrance-forums/CS/forums/ .I certainly found people on there very helpful in the past.

We went to France as early retirees before they stopped entry. If and hopefully now you can join then it is far from free. You will have to fill in a French tax form each year (at about now) You then get a statement of residual and taxable income. The residual income is used to calculate your contributions to the health care scheme.( about 8% of residual income.) You are billed quarterly for the contributions. When in the scheme, you are treated the same as any French person. There are charges as mentioned above but as a T2 on medication you will get 100% cover for diabetes related health care. As the previous poster mentioned, it is important to also have a mutuelle to pay for charges that might arise from accidents or other conditions. These companies are not able to take previous conditions into account when they fix the premium for this.