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I have recently read an article in a UK newspaper concerning the use of EHIC cards for holidaymakers in Spain. Apparently some clinics are refusing to treat emergencies without proof of private insurance or prior payment, in direct contravention of EU rules.
As pensioners and owners of a Spanish holiday home we now find that private travel insurance without use of the EHIC card is prohibitively expensive so would expect to rely on the card should an emergency arise during our 2 month stay. I would be interested to know if anybody on the forum has actually had this happen to them?
Mike
This message was last edited by xetog on 09/05/2013.
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Which article was that? I have heard that ambulances tend to take holiday makers to private clinics or hospitals which are not under the EHIC system. It's important that EHIC users use the state hospitals. I used that system some years ago and it worked perfectly. However, the EHIC should not be a complete substitute for travel insurance. It will not cover repatriation, for example. Even a broken leg could lead to a delay of several weeks and alternative, often expensive, flights or ferries back could make a big dent in the holiday budget.
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It was yesterdays Daily Mail 08/05/2013. The problems of repatriation or longer stays don't really concern us as the ferry rebooking is not expensive and overstaying would not be a problem. However, the thrust of the article was that even public hospitals were refusing the EHIC.
Mike
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_______________________
Poppyseed
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xetog
You may be unable to travel in normal transport and may have to be repatriated by ambulance and aircraft. I watched an A&E in the Costas type programme and a chappie on holiday had a broken leg which could not be operated on for over a week, due to the swelling, had to be repatriated by ambulance and aircraft. Because he was on holiday, he had insurance. If he had to pay for this out of his own funds, the cost would soon wipe out a good part of your holiday home value.
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My wife hurt her ankle in November 2012 while on holidays in Mojacar, we attended the local health clinic and they advised her to
go to the hospital at Huercal Overa.
We attended the hospital, produced the EHIC Card, received fantastic medical attention and had no problems at all with our card.
No charge for wonderful and efficient service
Wrixon
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Virtually the same article in the Daily Telegraph except they say it is people being taken to private clinics. Again, make sure you go to a Spanish NHS clinic or hospital. They accept the EHIC.
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EHIC should be carried by all and you should insist on being treated in a public hospital. Spain is the country most complained about in not accepting the EHIC or veering patients to private clinics or hospitals.
If your card is rejected in a public hospital and you’re forced to pay there and then for treatment, make sure you collect as much evidence as possible to prove that it was a medical emergency. The holiday insurance
Britain spent £247 million treating Spanish citizens last year, however, Spain spent just £3.2 million treating British people. Now about 11 million Brits visit Spain each year and not very many Spaniards visit Britain, so who is cheating who. The health tourist is keeping the hotels near Heathrow fully occupied while the British taxpayer is paying for other country's sick to be treated free in our hospitals. Then we have all the sick staying with relatives just so they can have treatment free on the NHS. It's not surprising UKIP is doing so well in our elections.
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In todays RTN there is a tale of the child of a Brit working in Spain who had actually been born in a Spanish hospital being denied treatment. How can this be?
Mike
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What is RTN?
It does not seem fair to deny any child treatment unless their parent/s are willing and able to pay. Is this child not a Spanish citizen if he was born in Spain. As Spain has a public and private health system, perhaps he was refused treatment in a private hospital. Maybe those who know the Spanish health system may be able to explain.
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No, the child would not be a Spanish citizen just because it was born in Spain. The same as a child born in Britain is not automatically a British citizen if they are born there. I feel, however, that any hospital refusing to treat a child should be reported regardless of the circumstances.
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EHIC should be carried by all and you should insist on being treated in a public hospital. Spain is the country most complained about in not accepting the EHIC or veering patients to private clinics or hospitals.
If your card is rejected in a public hospital and you’re forced to pay there and then for treatment, make sure you collect as much evidence as possible to prove that it was a medical emergency. The holiday insurance
Britain spent £247 million treating Spanish citizens last year, however, Spain spent just £3.2 million treating British people. Now about 11 million Brits visit Spain each year and not very many Spaniards visit Britain, so who is cheating who. The health tourist is keeping the hotels near Heathrow fully occupied while the British taxpayer is paying for other country's sick to be treated free in our hospitals. Then we have all the sick staying with relatives just so they can have treatment free on the NHS. It's not surprising UKIP is doing so well in our elections.
I think you will find this is a bit the wrong way around.....Britain spent £247 million on Brits that hurt themselves or had hospital treatment in Spain, and Spain charged England this amount, England payed up, but when people from Spain did come to England and needed treatment in our NHS, England is so slap happy it hardly charges anyone for the treatment......Same goes for the many other countries anywhere in the world, England fixes them up and wont charge for it, excuse being the NHS does not have the time or facilities to sort out this mess.
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Baz1946 Thanks for correcting my stupid error.
You're right that we are not skilled at collecting from overseas patients. Perhaps we should have gone down the route of an identity card, making all citizens show their cards before they received treatment. We need out GP and A&E services to somehow check if people are entitled to free NHS treatment as they are both used as the gateway to all NHS treatments.
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Baz1946 Thanks for correcting my stupid error.
You're right that we are not skilled at collecting from overseas patients. Perhaps we should have gone down the route of an identity card, making all citizens show their cards before they received treatment. We need out GP and A&E services to somehow check if people are entitled to free NHS treatment as they are both used as the gateway to all NHS treatments.
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Baz1946 Thanks for correcting my stupid error.
You're right that we are not skilled at collecting from overseas patients. Perhaps we should have gone down the route of an identity card, making all citizens show their cards before they received treatment. We need out GP and A&E services to somehow check if people are entitled to free NHS treatment as they are both used as the gateway to all NHS treatments.
Patdean, not a stupid error on your part because i am sure the way you put it was the way it was reported in the papers.
Could never see why we didnt have ID cards, after all, we, the Brits who are born and raised here have more then enough ID in one way or another without even thinking about them to much, so one more "correct" one wont hurt us, and if we did have them perhaps a lot of these immigration, NHS and other problems might have been avoided.
You do have to wonder why so many people were against them, when probabley these same people spill everything about themselves on sites like facebook and twitter.
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Sorry, patdean, but it doesn't work that way in UK. The guidelines from the NHS and the local PCTs are so confusing that it's impossible to check on anyone. It's not the fault of the GP surgery. Hospitals are a little better but guidelines for GPs are terrible. Example. At our surgery we had a middle eastern "student" with 2 wives, 4 children and a nanny. The passport was annotated "no recourse to public funds - student visa". Now, he was in his mid forties but the PCT said he was entitled to NHS services on a student visa so we had to register him, his 2 wives and 4 children. I didn't register the nanny but the PCT then came back to say register her as she was part of the household even though she didn't have the student visa. That was 8 people, never having paid taxes or insurance in UK now being treated free of charge. On top of that, Saudi Arabia requires children to be vaccinated against hepatitis B which is not a requirement for children in UK. We had to provide a free treatment, plus nurses time, for the children on instructions from the PCT. On top of this, despite a massive booklet from the NHS on who and who isn't eligible for NHS care free of charge, we were then given instructions to register and treat anyone who turned up requesting it to avoid being called racist or not giving treatment if required. No wonder the NHS in UK costs so much. Another example. My daughter worked as a nurse at Ashford hospital, quite near Heathrow. Women from, mainly African countries but sometimes Asian countries, would turn up in the last few days of pregnancy and would be given full delivery services, all courtesy of the British taxpayer, because that is an emergency. This despite the fact that airlines should not allow passengers to fly in their 3rd centile (last 10 weeks ish). Another example. All patients are entitled to a consultation in their own language. Our PCT paid millions for language line. The GP would ring language line who would contact a native speaker, in any language such as ITO or Somali or Javanese or whatever was required. Speaker phone on and translation service given. Consultation time was trebled using this service. So next time your GP is running late, remember this. And people wonder why the NHS costs so much. BTW, RTN is Round Town News, a freebie paper on the Costa Blanca which often prints unsubstantiated stories. I believe they've had to print a retraction in the latest edition regarding a group of solicitors.
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bobaol
Listening to the news last night about the NHS A&E collapsing under the strain of an ageing population. I was so angry, I could have punched the TV. Are our old people to feel guilty about going to A&E if they are feeling ill. The last time I went for a blood test to my local hospital, I saw with my own eyes that the majority of the waiting patients were from eastern Europe. Four patients names are displayed on a screen at a time and when your name changes to pink you enter one of four cubicles to have your blood test. In the 35 minutes I was waiting about 30 names appeared. One was Asian, mine was British and the rest all east European spelling. I was gobsmacked. Now my local area does not have a problem with east European immigrants, the largest immigrant group is probably Asian and that is a small percentage. So where have all the patients for blood tests sprung from. The next time I logged onto my computer, I sent an email to ED Milliband and to David Cameron to tell them of my experience and to point out that I would be voting for UKIP in forthcoming elections and would be trying to get as many people as possible to do the same. I feel that both main parties need to realise just how angry we are about people coming into this country to use services they have not contributed to whilst our old people wait ever longer for services they have contributed to all their working lives.
Now Bobaol, your email is very worrying. If the rest of Europe can check if prospective patients are eligible for their state health treatment and follow through on the result, why can't our PCP/CCG. I have heard of the various health tourists flying into Heathrow and presenting themselves at various hospitals. I'm sure many more are coming here to stay with relatives and also availing themselves of our NHS. All the time our ageing population is being blamed for causing the problems. The new 111 number is probably being used as a taxi number to hospital by many..
Perhaps you should send an email to Cameron, Clegg, Milliband and Farage to let them know of the actual state of play in trying to police the gateway to the NHS. You don't have to use your real name. Or if not that, find a story in todays newspaper and comment on it, you can just copy your post. The government is giving the impression that peoples eligibility is being checked but they are not saying what happens after the check. From your post, it appears that people are too lily livered to say no or yes if you pay.
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If the EHIC card is rejected in a public hospital, what can the visitor do if he cannot afford thousands of euros? phone DWP, British consul? Sometimes Travel insurance won't pay for something that could have been treated under EHIC.
I read on EOS blogs that a patient's external knee fixator was removed because he could not afford to pay the company for it. I also read about two patients who had to pay the crematorio to cremate their amputated limbs. Sounds like a Ronnie Barker sketch! Somehow I can't imagine either of these things happening in the UK NHS.
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It si contrary to both Spanish & EU law that a child should be denied the right to hospital treatment.
All children under the age of 18 ,or still in education ,plus pregnant women both pre & post-natal , & whether registered as residents or not, have an undeniable right to full healthcare. It is written in stone. Even in the Spanish law , they cannot be refused.
Anyone being refused should immediately ask for the 'Hojas de Reclamación' , complaint forms.
Do not worry if you do not speak/write spanish. They can be filled in , in any language. Also make an immediate complaint to the EU using the SOLVIT system.
_______________________
Todos somos Lorca.
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It seems like the usual situation when dealing with Spanish authorities, They don't actually know the rules and just make them up as they go along. If you get someone who is having a bad day, you get nothing! We have been going to our holiday home for 60 days, twice a year for about 7 years and never required any emergency medical treatment. Back in the early days, I did enquire about my monthly anti coagulation blood test which the UK clinic had assured me was free under a reciprocal agreement throughout the EU. I went to the local clinic, showed my EHI card and was flatly refused by the girl on reception. I simply went up the road to a private clinic and got it done for 40 euros. Since then I have purchased my own machine and take with me the necessary test strips I get from the UK. However, what if I had a stroke? I cannot fill out a complaint form and wait for some resolution, you pay up or die. Free emergency health care is a basic provision in all EU states, but if there is even a possibility of refusal, I think we will stop coming.
Mike
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