Interview with the Members of the European Parliament, Annika Schlingheider (ECR) and Panagiotis Apostolidis (S&D)

Press team: As a short introduction can you name the advantages and disadvantages of a more standardized European health care in a more general approach?

Annika Schlingheider (ECR): The ECR group holds the opinion that there are some good aspects of the proposal for the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare: for instance, simplifying the rules governing treatment abroad can be seen as mobilizing market forces in terms of general access to medical services. In our opinion, the proposed directive can help increase the competitiveness of health services and, as a result, have a positive impact on the improvement of the quality of health services within the EU. However, in our opinion, there are several problems to the proposal. The most problematic part of the directive is the issue of reimbursement laid down in Article 6. From our point of view, it is imperative to limit the development of ‘health tourism’, which could be enhanced by the directive in its current form. In our mind, it is more urgent to provide good and comparable health care systems in the individual member state of the EU than spending money on the mobility. Reimbursement for health care services in another member state should therefore mainly be granted for treatments, which are not available in the home state. Therefore, a good authorization system for the granting of reimbursement has to be established. We do not agree with the S&D opinion that costs for travel and accommodation should also be reimbursed.

Panagiotis Apostolidis (S&D): First of all my name is Panagiotis Apostolidis and I am representing the United Kingdom and as socialists we really approve of that directive, we thing we made some amendment what will really help people making the best of this offer. We had a really fruitful debate with all the factions and a small fight with the ICR, because we had no common ground. But considering the advantages, now patient are able to make the best of their right of free movement and health care services without any borders. After the amendments concerning the authorisation needed and the reimbursement issues, I don’t think I can find any disadvantages in this directive, as it is meant to help people.

Press team: As we understood it S&D proposes to cover not only the costs for travel and accommodation, but as well the costs of a possible fellow traveller, who could accompany the sickened person. How do you plan to finance these expanses?

Panagiotis Apostolidis (S&D): Thank you for this question, but first let me clarify something, which was said wrong. We are not covering the costs for people travelling along with patients, we only will cover expanses made by the guardians of people with disabilities, like handicapped people, or people with special needs and certainly for under-aged children. So only in those two cases we will trouble the expanses. Other than that, the S&D believes that it is unacceptable to set limits that have to do with financial issues, because it is a fact that Europe is in a financial crisis, so we cannot make people pay plane tickets and accommodation without reimbursing them.  I believe this is the best way to do it and when it comes to funding, there will no raising taxes for any European citizen, we just are going to rearrange the financial system.

Annika Schlingheider (ECR): Could I add something to that? This is an interesting question, because this is exactly on what we had our fight. In this aspect we have a very different opinion. Of course we approve of the social approach of the S&D party and other factions, but the financial issue or rather the way they want to solve this, is that the member state of affiliation, that is the state from which the ill person is leaving, is paying for the treatment and the travel cost, if necessary. According to our opinion this is not the right measure to take if you want to approve the health care system in the long run and assure good health care services in the EU. But what, in fact, is more urgent, is to provide a good health care system within the member states. It certainly is a good idea to make access to treatments in other states possible, but by this exactly the member states, which already have no money are made to pay for the travel cost. So would it not be better to make this member states spend the money, which otherwise would be spend on traveling and accommodation costs, on their own health care system, as this countries, which need to send people away are usually the countries with a health care system which is not that good. So we are rather supporting a nation approach on this issue.

Press team: Thank you very much for that interesting interview and we hope you will carry on having a day of fruitful discussions and finally a outcome that will be satisfying.

By Amandine Ledreux