I remembered this old meme the other day and it got me thinking; can you actually travel to Europe as a US citizen exclusively to take advantage of the more affordable healthcare?
Pretty sure Canada and Mexico are closer than Yurop and should allow you to get cheaper healthcare
Yes. Europeans themselves also travel to other European countries for cheaper healthcare. To the point where there is an actual medical tourism industry.
For example, there’s a town of 35k people in Hungary that has over 300 dental clinics, because it’s close to the Austrian border and is about half the cost or less.
Americans can’t do it. No EHIC.
A lot of people do it for dental care and plastic surgeries already. It’s exactly the same with everything else. People here don’t seem to realize you have private healthcare in Europe where you can just pay for the visit. The problem is that you also have to pay for the stay. I will give you two examples. Wisdom tooth extraction costs around 300 euros in Spain vs $500 in US. Doesn’t make sense to fly to Spain to do it. Tooth implant costs around 1000 euros in Spain vs $3500 in US. Now paying for a single flight would make sense but tooth implant requires multiple visits spanning around 3 months. If you have to fly twice or stay in Spain for 3 months it doesn’t make sense.
But if you’re already going to Europe and want to fix your tooth while you’re here you can totally do it. A lot of people that live in US but have family in Europe do it.
It varies per country. If you would go to the Netherlands, you’d still need health insurance. You can only get it if you are a Dutch citizen in some way. The costs of this are about 180/month. Plus you have what we call your own risk. If you need healthcare you pay 385 maximum yourself. If you can’t pay that, there are installment plans. And if the 180 a month is too steep for you, there is support from the Belastingdienst (IRS) that is dependent on your income.
So example: if you need an operation that is covered in basic Dutch health insurance and you would live here for a year on work visum, you might pay 2400 a year in insurance costs and 385 own risk, totaling to 2785. If the operation would cost more than that in the US, you’re in luck.
This is all provided you can get health insurance in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, as a Dutch citizen, health insurance is mandatory.
Bro one drug I’m on is $3500/mo. A common surgery I had a few years back was $15k.
Yep the issue with our system is that people who never see a doctor or a hospital pay for the ones that have been dealt a rough hand or live unhealthy. The idea is that being ill is not the standard. You should be able to do a Pareto analysis of costs and it might check out.
In my job I’ve seen American ambulance bills that cost more than that. And if they used a helicopter or even just a fixed wing medevac it’s usually at least 10x as much.
Hell, I’ve seen routine injections billed higher than that come to think of it…
I take an injection every four weeks, they cost 600 each. Add up a few visits to the dentist, GP and a check up at an academic hospital and I’d pay about a third of the actual cost.
Then again my dad never has any ailments, lives a healthy lifestyle with a lot of exercise and he pays the same.
To really take advantage of the lower prices you need to be at least a permanent resident of the EU, you can’t do that on a tourist visa, so it depends on your marketable skills if you can get a company to sponsor a visa for you.
Yes, but most Europeans tend to underestimate how expensive medicine is in the USA, from personal experience here in Spain an ambulance ride to the hospital + consultation + x-ray is free for residents and costs €200 for tourists, whereas the same stuff in the USA can cost around $5000 even for residents.
Like kamala said; “Do not come”
As a general rule yeah you can, however the price for stuff if you’re not insured is very expensive, but it will likely still be much cheaper than the USA, and also if it’s not an emergency you might have trouble being able to get to a doctor. Let me give you an example, we were visiting Spain when my wife fell and twisted her ankle, we had to call an ambulance, she had an emergency consultation with an X-RAY (luckily she didn’t broke anything), and because we had forgotten our sanitary card we had to pay foreign prices, i.e. €200. That looks expensive to us because if we had brought that card it would have been free, but that same thing in the US could cost us $5000 so overall lot cheaper.
That being said, in Ireland for my wife to go to an Endocrinologist we had to:
- Register with a GP
- Book an appointment for that GP
- Pay that appointment
- Convince the GP you need to see an Endocrinologist. If he disagrees you won’t get to an Endocrinologist.
- The GP books the Endocrinologist appointment for you, or sends an email to the endocrinologist allowing you to book it
- You pay for the Endocrinologist appointment
- You go there and explain your symptoms, he’ll likely order blood exam and ask you to return on another day
- You book and pay the blood exams
- Do the blood exam
- Book and pay the return consultation to the endocrinologist
Overall cost was around €1000 and took us over a month to go through all of that. And again this might feel cheap for you, but to us feels expensive. And because of the initial requirement to register with the GP tourists can’t do it. Not sure how other countries work, in Spain we book stuff through our insurance and just show the insurance card and haven’t paid anything in over a year.
It used to be going to Cuba to get healthcare! Now there’s too many problems there to actually consider it
