Eu directive may help Brits who travel to Tenerife and Spain.
For second home owners regularly travelling to their property in Europe, obtaining insurance to ensure you’re covered for any accidents that could occur abroad is at best an annoyance, at worst a hefty extra cost. Luckily, if you’re a citizen of the EU or UK travelling to another country within the Eurozone, all that is about to change.
By 2013, all EU citizens will be able to claim back for medical treatments they receive in other European countries, with or without travel insurance. The new Cross-Border Healthcare Directive, ratified in Brussels last month by all Eurozone states, will benefit both short-term travellers encountering those pesky ski accidents, and retirees who divide their time between, say, the UK and a second home in the Mediterranean.
For the latter category, healthcare has been a particular problem previously. As well as not qualifying for free healthcare in the EU, British citizens who spend more than 184 days a year abroad are also discounted from receiving NHS treatments. The new law should simplify the process for this expat category, ensuring they can receive medical care whether they spend the majority of time in France, Spain, the Canary Islands, the UK or anywhere else in Europe.
Despite the EU executive’s estimation that cross-border healthcare will only take up a mere 1% of total health spending, the new laws (which must be implemented by all states within 30 months) have met with some resistance in the UK. “The rules will turn the UK’s NHS into a bureacratic nightmare”, said UKIP leader Nigel Farage. There are also concerns that some countries may be late in doing their part to implement the laws, as Spain, particularly, has been slow to implement many health and insurance-related resolutions from the EU in recent years.
