PolyPassport recently profiled a Texan woman and her family’s journey from the US to France in search of more affordable healthcare and saner politics. They had EU passports on the basis of ancestry.
It reinforces a lot of the stereotypes we have about healthcare in Europe, particularly on pricing and access overall. Cataract surgery cost her some 300 EUR (!) and her daughter receives free prosthetics every two years.
But her story does dispel the notion that anyone, anywhere can just walk into an EU hospital and get treated—including EU citizens. That’s consistent with my own experience. I’ve lived in a few EU countries and certainly paid less for often high-quality care than in the US. But I never found it to be straightforward or necessarily leagues better than equivalent systems, say, in Asia. Like the woman in the article, I also missed speaking to providers in my native language about ailments that can’t often be conveyed with an A2 level proficiency! :)
It got me thinking about the trade-offs we face when chasing healthcare (or anything really) abroad. It’s about balancing the good with the not-so-good and making the most of our choices wherever we go.
Food for thought and a point discussion.
But her story does dispel the notion that anyone, anywhere can just walk into an EU hospital and get treated—including EU citizens.
Right. Usually: even citizens who are non-residents aren’t entitled to the same service as the ones who are resident.
It’s fair the way I see it. You pay local taxes, you get access to healthcare. You don’t pay local taxes, it’s only fair that you’re expected to pay more than a resident who does. So the notion of “you can just walk in” is a bit misleading IMO.
You can’t just “walk in”. Of course exceptions are there. Some countries do let you just walk in. But I was saying overall.
Depends. There are countries that the system is not insurance based. You can have access with your “personal number” which you either get by birth or residency, so in a sense healthcare is like an unofficial right. So you always have this as a fallback plan.