Health tourism plan put forward

Strengthened rights for patients to seek treatment in other countries were put forward by the European Commission on Wednesday – a move that dismayed the UK.

A draft directive would allow patients throughout the EU to travel to other countries for routine treatment without seeking authorisation from their health authorities or insurers.

The directive allows countries to apply an “emergency break” if they can prove they are unable to afford the cost of funding significant movements of patients. That qualification appears to have bought off opposition from the Socialist group in the European Parliament which has said it was happy with the deal. But the UK government declared bluntly that “health tourism will not be funded” by the National Health Service.

Androulla Vassiliou, the EU’s top health official, presented the move as a way of controlling spiralling healthcare costs.

In an interview with the FT she said greater pooling of resources would help countries contain costs. She said governments should consider dropping some of the most expensive treatments in favour of sending patients abroad.

“Every country is very eager to spend money on everything because there is a demand from their citizens. Gradually they will realise they cannot have everything. It is better to specialise in certain things and rely on your neighbour for something else and vice versa. There will be this pooling together of expertise and knowledge.”

Mrs Vassiliou is from Cyprus, a small island that already pays other EU members to treat conditions it cannot. Denmark sends patients to Sweden. Mrs Vassiliou would like these schemes to be expanded.

But treatment would be limited to what patients are entitled to under their national systems. They would have to pay upfront and then be reimbursed the amount the procedure costs in their home country.

“We don’t want to harmonise healthcare,” Mrs Vassiliou said.

The proposal was attacked by the UK, which fears paying for a flood of refugees from its strained NHS to other EU countries with better systems. The UK department of health said it wanted to control who travels for medical procedures.

Mrs Vassiliou said the impact of the directive would be minor. It codifies European court rulings which have established that patients can seek treatment in another member state.

Few patients take up their right. By giving them more information it would open the option up beyond the rich who can already afford to travel, she said. “Ninety per cent of people prefer to stay at home where they know the language and the system,” she said.

The EU spends €1,000bn ($1,600bn, £796bn) annually on healthcare, just 1 per cent is “across border”. According to polls, 4 per cent of Europeans had treatment in another country last year. Most were on holiday and covered by the long-standing system of reciprocal emergency care, which will be unaffected. The proposal does not affect social security systems either, the Commission said.

However, it would require countries to be more open about costs as governments bill each other for treating patients. More far-reaching could be her plan to define minimum standards of care so that travelling patients know what they are getting.