PARIS (Reuters) - French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon's proposal that healthcare insurance should be partly privatized has been deleted from his campaign website.
Fillon initially proposed, on his campaign website, that blanket reimbursement of treatment costs be limited to cases of serious and long-term illness, and that other illness or ailments be covered by private insurance.
On Wednesday, the proposal was gone from the healthcare section of his site, www.fillon2017.fr.
A Reuters check of older versions of the same page show that the original was still there on Dec. 12, that it had vanished on Dec. 13, and that on Wednesday it was replaced by an article stating Fillon's desire to save the welfare system, but with no reference to private insurance.
Fillon's campaign spokesman Jerome Chartier declined to comment when contacted for an explanation.
The now-vanished sentence was: "I propose focusing universal public insurance on serious and long-term illnesses, and (focusing) private insurance on the rest".
Opinion polls ahead of the presidential election in April and May make Fillon a clear favorite to win. His health proposal has drawn criticism from political adversaries and even from people in his own camp.