Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-355"
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"en.20050607.31.2-355"2
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".
Mr President, the question facing us is how we are going to manage the rights of our EU patients to go to another Member State for medical treatment and have their costs reimbursed now that our courts have handed down these rights to them in the context of our single market.
I thank Mr Bowis for his excellent report. We expected nothing less from him. This is a first step on that road and is a response to the impressive communication from the High Level Reflection Group, which was set up in response to the ECJ judgments. However, I agree with our rapporteur’s view that a sense of urgency is missing from the communication in relation to policy and spending priorities. We are also at risk of being driven by the courts rather than the statute in this most important of areas.
I would favour the minimum legal framework necessary for both providers and purchasers of cross-border healthcare, but we should not underestimate the complexity of the task. As we know, health policy and health budgets are competences of the individual Member States: this is strictly subsidiarity. So the financial implications of these new patient rights need structuring, not least at the level of health insurance cover, which varies greatly throughout the 25 Member States from demand control to supply control systems.
The attempt to deal with this issue in the General Services Directive is ill-advised and I welcome the Commission’s change of mind. That directive is about service mobility in the EU, not customer or patient mobility. It is particularly not about customers who will not be paying their own bills, customers who may need aftercare and follow-up treatments when they return home.
Our public likes the option of travelling to another EU country if treatment is not available at home: the obvious first choice. Treatment may not be available for certain specialities, or there could be an unacceptable delay in accessing the required treatment. Large-scale patient mobility should be unnecessary if a Member State discharges its responsibilities with a well-run, efficient health service.
In 2002 Ireland was forced to set up the National Treatment Purchase Fund to reduce its ever-lengthening waiting list. In that year alone, almost 2 000 Irish patients were sent to the UK for treatment. We are adept at exporting our patients. Another 650 opted to go to Member States on E112 forms that same year – difficult as those forms are. But only one patient opted to travel to Ireland for elective treatment. By comparison, 137 000 opted to travel to Spain.
These figures highlight the urgent need to manage this right to access treatment throughout the EU. Our patients, doctors and taxpayers deserve to have it managed properly. They want and expect to be offered sound guidance on policy and procedure.
I should like to ask the Commissioner what the next move will be and when. Does he accept that a properly structured service is urgently needed in this area?"@en1
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