Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-12-Speech-1-188"
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"en.20070312.22.1-188"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, health knows no frontiers, or at least, one hopes that that is the case. In exactly the same way health services should not stop at borders either, in other words, they should be of high quality and available to every citizen of the EU wherever he or she may be. We are now at the beginning of a debate rather than the end of one, so a vigorous debate is desirable and will get us where we want to go; health is not a commodity, and the internal market is, after all, no more than the space within which these services are provided.
These services need to be subject to special rules, with questions relating to the guarantee of quality provided, patients’ safety, the safety of medicines and of medical products, to redress in the event of faulty or failed procedures, and to centres of excellence being examined in depth. The patient, who is to be protected, is the subject of particular concern, being, in cases of doubt, the weaker party, and often, indeed, the one who is at the mercy of others.
We are, as matter of principle, in favour of patient mobility and of the mobility of service providers, but reimbursement, which is a quite essential element in the cross-border trade in medical services, is subsidiary, and this has to be made plain right now, even though things are only at an early stage.
I do not, at present, see any chance of a European health insurance fund, and do not indeed think one is germane to our purpose, on the grounds that all the 27 national systems have their own problems, and, here too, where reimbursement is concerned, we are talking not about an open market, but rather about state-run and dirigiste systems.
In my own country, which has an extraordinarily complex system of payment to beneficiaries, such an opening-up would raise at once the discrimination against the country’s own nationals, since the benefits paid are capped rather than open-ended.
It think it still appropriate that primary responsibility for this dossier should remain with the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety rather than with the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection."@en1
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