EU plans cross-border healthcare

The healthcare plan is part of an EU "social Europe" package The European Commission is poised to unveil a healthcare package that could give patients new rights to seek medical treatment elsewhere in the EU. Patients would not have to get their doctor's approval for non-hospital care abroad, officials are quoted as saying. EU ministers and Euro MPs will discuss the proposals once they are unveiled. Only costs similar to those in a patient's home state would be covered. About 1% of operations performed in the EU involve people from other countries. Non-hospital care would be reimbursed by the home state up to the level the patient could expect at home, according to reports. But the state would not reimburse expensive treatment received abroad that was unavailable in the patient's home country. Skipping queues The package is seen as an effort to give patients greater freedom in choosing where they get treatment, and to answer critics who say the EU is too remote from ordinary citizens' concerns. But "health tourism" - patients going abroad for treatment - has received wide publicity in recent years. The commission's package would help bring EU rules in line with European Court of Justice rulings, such as one in 2006, which said the UK's National Health Service should reimburse a woman for a hip replacement operation she had in France. The woman, Yvonne Watts, won the argument that patients facing "undue delays" in the queue for operations should be entitled to treatment in other EU countries. She paid £3,900 for the operation. Currently the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) provides emergency care across the EU for patients who fall ill while abroad. The scheme only applies to those who have health insurance at home.