Free healthcare in Spain?

The following article seems to suggest that free state healthcare for all residents is back in Spain (as of 2015).

http://www.expatica.com/es/healthcare/Guide-to-health-insurance-in-Spain_439814.html

Does anyone know if its true? If so, why does the 60 euro a month voluntary scheme (convenio especial) still exist?

I think you're reading it wrong. If you are a legal resident and paying into the social security system and pay taxes in Spain you get healthcare. If you are over retirement age, registered disabled or under 18 you get free healthcare by transferring your cover with the S1 form

That article deals with the high number of illegal immigrants in Spain who do not pay taxes and can bring quite a few diseases in from N. Africa (or wherever) with them.

If you are legal, EU citizen who is paying tax but not in one of the categories above then you don't get it unless you are covered by some type of insurance (S1, private, convenio especial).

Funny system, eh?

Pubnlic Health care in Spain  guaranteed to persons who hold the status of insured person

Who are insured persons?

Those who are:

- Employed or self-employed worker affiliated to Social Security
- Pensioner of the Social security system.

- Benficiary of any other periodic provision of Social Security,  including the provision and the allowance for unemployment or other of similar nature.
- Already exhausted the benefit or allowance for unemployment or other benefits of a similar nature, are unemployed, does not credit his  condition of insured by any other title and reside in Spain.

Foreigners with permission to reside in Spanish territory have the same legal regime than community or assimilated foreigners.

Foreigners not registered or authorized as resident in Spain, are entitled to receive medical assistance only in the following ways:

- In emergencies related to serious illness  or accident,  until the situation of medical discharge.
- In assistance to pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum.

In any case, foreigners under 18 years of age receive health care under the same conditions as Spaniards.

I have read on different forums that you can get free healthcare if you are classed as disabled. How does this work? Do you just have to bring proof that you have been awarded a disability benefit over here ( Scotland ) or do you have to have an assessment done over there? 

If you are a resident in Spain and are registered disabled in UK, you can transfer your healthcare to Spain using the S1 form. Contact the Overseas Healthcare Team at Newcastle on +44 (0)191 218 1999 from abroad, Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm and they will sort it out. Once you have the form you can register with the Spanish NHS.

If you are only visiting then the EHIC will cover you for emergency and urgent treatment.

I have asked a similar question before and no real answer was given so here we go

A Spanish citizen aged 30 no parents or partner never worked will he or she qualify for health care?

The same for any long term unemployed Spanish citizen

If they qualify as insured person then how come the same rule does not apply to long term unemployed eu citizens etc some may have worked and lost their job and befits expired 

Official statistics show Britain has paid almost £6.2billion to cover the cost of treating UK nationals in the EU since records began in 2007.

But over the same period, the country has received just £405million in return to cover the costs of treating EU nationals living here.

The figures mean Britain receives just £1 back for every £15 it pays out.

Brexit campaigners last night said the cash lost was equivalent to the cost of abolishing prescription charges or dental fees, or doubling the money available for the Cancer Drugs Fund.

Former Labour health minister Gisela Stuart said the scale of EU health tourism strengthened the case for leaving the EU.

Mrs Stuart, chairman of the cross-party Vote Leave campaign, said: ‘The UK has been getting short-changed by the EU for years. We hand over £350million to Brussels every week but get less than half of that back – with strings attached.

‘On top of that, health tourism from the EU has cost us billions. This money could have been much better spent – it could have been invested to improve care for NHS patients.’ 

She added: ‘If we vote to leave we will be able to stop handing over so much money to the EU and we would be able to spend our money on priorities here in the UK like abolishing prescription charges and investing in the NHS.’ 

True or False

 

Other EU countries have regulations in place regarding residency and insist that anyone living there has access to medical insurance, either private or public, or is paying in to the system. The UK has no such system and provides free healthcare to anyone who declares themselves resident. One NHS chief even said that people entering the country would be entitled to free NHS services from day one of arrival simply by giving a relative or a friend's address.

Yes, I should imagine the S1 system works both ways but, when working as a nurse, anyone attending the surgery with an address in the area was given the forms to fill in and generally received an NHS number within a week or two. The same with what was the E111 and now the EHIC. No guidance was ever given from the local trust regarding claiming for this system and people attending were simply given a temporary resident form to fill in, the same as for someone visiting from, say, Bolton or Glasgow would get. Pensioners from any country living in the UK were automatically registered and I doubt if any of those working in the surgeries or the local trust would have any idea what an S1 form was.

Spain, for example, does have the systems in place for claiming the money back from the patient's home country. Even if you turn up to the A&E without an EHIC they will telephone Newcastle to get your entitlement faxed through and claim that way.

If UK leaves the EU, how will that change? Unless more robust systems are put in place and GP surgeries start employing people to chase up the money then nothing will happen. Until a system of registering anyone from abroad is brought in (and they don't even know how many are in the country because there is no register of foreign nationals residing in the UK) then it will be impossible to keep a tab on them.

We even had people who had moved back to their country, whether it be India, the Caribbean or elsewhere, who remained registered and a friend or family would come in and collect their prescription to post abroad. Evidence for this was difficult to come by but it was playing the system currently in use in UK.

And that former health minister is talking through her ......well, she is. There is no such thing as NHS UK and only those in England pay for their prescriptions. Every other area gets them free.

This is yet another case of blaming the EU for the UK failings.