Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-353"
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"en.20050607.31.2-353"2
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".
Mr President, it has been a delight to listen to ‘Commissioner’ Karas! I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see him in that role.
Let those words be our guide as we give clarity and confidence to our citizens who urgently need both from us.
Often colleagues are faced with the question on the doorstep of ‘what does Europe do for me?’. This debate will help them to answer that question, at least in one respect: that this report and this measure are all about giving patients more rights and power over their own health and the right to go to another Member State for treatment if they face undue delay in their own country. That gives great opportunities for patients; it also brings new headaches for the managers of health budgets.
I should like to thank my colleagues who have contributed to the debates we have had on this issue, not least in a hearing that we held in Parliament. I should also like to thank the Commission. I sympathise with the Commissioner who tonight is not too well, but I am sure that this measure will help to find a solution even to that and we will be able to find somewhere for him to travel to in order to find succour! I thank him and his staff for the help they have given as we have discussed this issue. I thank the many people outside Parliament and the Commission who have given their ideas, as we have sought them, on how we should proceed.
This measure starts from people. It does not start from the Commission, Parliament or governments. It starts from people who look to Europe for a solution to their problem. They took the issue to the European Court of Justice. They challenged that court to give them mobility rights and the court did so. It gave them the right, if they faced undue delay in their own country, to go to another country with certain criteria: that the cost was comparable to what they would have paid in their own country and that the treatment was common in their own country. There were one or two other criteria as well. However, the judgment was made. A new opportunity had arisen.
There are many ways in which people who face delays in their own country can be helped. Part of the solution has been the bilateral contracts that we have had between governments and health services. Part of it has been the Interreg system bringing together hospitals across the European Union. I have seen this here in Strasbourg, which, as a city, is working with Lille and Luxembourg.
We have the E-111 and the new Euro-health card behind us. However, the E-112 has not been part of the solution. That form that was supposed to give people the opportunity to go for planned treatment abroad. That has been bureaucratic and obstructive and has to be changed.
We had the high-level reflection group, which looked at the issues, came up with some recommendations, but has gone for the long grass in terms of some of the issues. We now need action, we need guidelines. The patient who wants to use this opportunity needs to know whether his condition qualifies; he needs to know what forms to fill in; he needs to know where he can go; to which doctors and how he can check up on those doctors; if they are OK; can I get help with travel; can my family come and support me, particularly if there is a child involved; and what happens if something goes wrong. Guidance for patients is fundamental and guidance is urgently needed. Just as fundamental is guidance to doctors who will refer patients abroad, as is guidance to the health services and the insurance companies who will have unplanned expenditure and want to know how they will be reimbursed.
There are many issues that we need to look at: information to patients, the transfer of information on patients between countries, checks on doctors, the disciplinary procedures, the complaints procedures that will need to be behind all this, what happens to people who retire abroad to the sun, etc. Now we need certainty. If we do nothing then the courts will go deciding. The Watts case will be next. But I believe that Parliaments, not lawyers, should decide policy.
I should like to conclude by sharing with you the words of Louis Pasteur, that I quoted in my explanatory statement:
(Science recognises no borders because knowledge belongs to humanity and is the torch which illuminates the world.)"@en1
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"‘La science ne connaît pas de frontière parce que la connaissance appartient à l’humanité et que c’est la flamme qui illumine le monde’"1
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