PolyPassport recently profiled a Texan woman and her family’s journey from the US to France in search of more affordable healthcare and saner politics. They had EU passports on the basis of ancestry.
It reinforces a lot of the stereotypes we have about healthcare in Europe, particularly on pricing and access overall. Cataract surgery cost her some 300 EUR (!) and her daughter receives free prosthetics every two years.
But her story does dispel the notion that anyone, anywhere can just walk into an EU hospital and get treated—including EU citizens. That’s consistent with my own experience. I’ve lived in a few EU countries and certainly paid less for often high-quality care than in the US. But I never found it to be straightforward or necessarily leagues better than equivalent systems, say, in Asia. Like the woman in the article, I also missed speaking to providers in my native language about ailments that can’t often be conveyed with an A2 level proficiency! :)
It got me thinking about the trade-offs we face when chasing healthcare (or anything really) abroad. It’s about balancing the good with the not-so-good and making the most of our choices wherever we go.
Food for thought and a point discussion.
Not everyone is comfortable having a total stranger attend intimate medical appointments with them (ever been to the gynecologist while someone you don’t know interprets for you?), and interpreters usually only exist in large hospitals where there’s a significant population of minority language speakers. You’re not going to find an interpreter for standard medical appointments at small clinics or with your family doctor in small towns.