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.
Who the hell is assuming “anyone” can just waltz in to a hospital in an EU country and “get treated”? You get a doctors appointment, diagnosis and referral for further treatment, unless you’re in an emergency, then you go to the emergency hospital. The whole premise of your post is odd.
Americans cannot just “choose” to move to an EU country “for healthcare”. They need to qualify for a work visa. This family in your article are citizens/family of a citizen of an EU country, most Americans are not. To qualify for a work visa you have an education and work experience that would get you pretty decent health insurance in the USA too.
Digital nomads, “retirees” and similar pay their own health insurance. Most EU countries do not even have retirement visas; they really do not want to add on elderly people to take care of.
Many Americans find European healthcare lacking when it’s not about serious conditions but more at the discretion of the doctor. From a European point of view many find Americans over medicated and over diagnosed. When healthcare isn’t a for profit business, but considered a basic right, they tend to draw different lines. Pain medication (and its consequences) is an obvious difference between the two, so are ADHD Asia gnoses and their treatment to pick a popular example.
“Universal Healthcare “ is just a universal shortcut most useful in American political discourse to describe a variety of healthcare and health insurance systems. Most European countries operate a mixed private/public system. For example in my country, employers have to offer access to employee healthcare, that can be either in the municipal health center, or through a private company. This is subsidised and a freelancing citizen here might wonder why it’s alright that these companies do not pay taxes in the country. Things like this draw public resources (it’s hard to find doctors to the public sector) and the system has been in crisis as long as I can remember.
If Americans wanted to change the healthcare system for everyone, they should organise politically, rather than seek “escape” to an EU country, where people did that decades ago (public healthcare wasn’t handed down for the peasants out of kindness of our overlords, but because of fear of revolt, and the need to produce healthy workers who can work for a long time). That however would require something called solidarity.
If you plan to move continents, do not rely on online articles, Tiktok, and viral posts about “universal healthcare”, labour rights or anything. You must read what the country and the European Union actually say on their official resources, readily available in English online. Just yesterday someone posted they had sold all their belongings to move to France en famille not quite understanding what “probation time” means. Unfortunately the host countries have no obligations to take care of an American expat family right after arrival (not even a family from another EU country, there are regulations to prevent “benefit shopping”)
Sometimes one sees US educated nurses and even doctors wanting to work in EU countries health care. Setting aside the language requirements (c1-c2 level with medical vocabulary prioritised), nurses and doctors in a publicly funded system are paid less for equally hard work. If the countries can bargain cheaper prices for medication than the USA seems to be able, they won’t pay anything like what a registered nurse might make in a high cost of living area in the USA. Whether anyone should make the kind of money high paid Americans can, is another can of worms.