Spain Saves on Health Costs

THE SPANISH Minister of Health Trinidad Jiménez was successful in overturning new proposals about health costs that would have cost Spain an estimated 2 billion euros per year. The proposals were about who should pay the cost of health care for European nationals resident in another country but seeking to return to their home country for healthcare. Under the proposed legislation that was backed by the United Kingdom and Sweden it would have been up to the country of residence to foot the bill. Spain in particular was extremely concerned about these proposals because of the high number of people who come to retire here. Those retirees could have elected to go back to their country of origin for extensive courses of treatment and left Spain picking up the bill. In many cases those people would not have contributed any payments to the Spanish Social system. At the moment under current agreements, Spain gets about 300 euros per person per month to cover the healthcare costs for each individual moving to be resident here. The total annual costs work out less than this and so Spain is a net winner to the tune of some 460 million euros but nonetheless if the new arrangements had been allowed to go through then control of that expenditure would have been lost. The Spanish team have established that the onus is on the country of origin to pay in those cases where a national returns to their home country for treatment.

  The opportunity to receive healthcare in a third country, for example a Britain resident in Spain wanting to receive treatment in Italy has not been discounted and the country of residence will have to pick up the ‘tab’. But patients wanting to do this would have to receive the approval of the medical practitioner in their country of residence and it would have to be demonstrated that the country of residence did not have similar facilities where treatment of the same kind and quality could be given. Trinidad Jiménez said that the objective of the new measures was to ensure that countries of residence had control over the potential health costs of their residents to avoid the so called ‘health tourism’ which some sources claim is on the rise in Europe and could involve some countries in ballooning unmanageable costs.

  It is worth stressing that these proposals in no way affect emergency healthcare given to EU residents travelling or holidaying in other EU states, carrying the EHIC health card and requiring emergency treatment while away from their homes.