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?
Yes, but the best deals are likely in Eastern Europe. Also, if you do this, you will need to pay cash. However, it might be cheaper/easier than in the USA.
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.
i think that’s because european countries hawe health insurance treaties. when going to the south of europe a few years ago i was recommended to get an official state medical insurance card to show that i was insured through another european system, otherwise i may have to pay full price.
This has always made me wonder, why aren’t US insurance companies getting in on this. It would be cheaper for them to buy the plane tickets & fly their patients to another country.
Because instead they just outright deny the claim and pay nothing. It also works against them if people start to realize they can get cheaper care elsewhere.
It’s cheaper still to just not cover it, and raise premiums.
Yes but
Full healthcare coverage is typically limited to fiscal resident, so you’ll have to pay out of pocket. That said to my understanding the US price are so absurd, that we’re like 10 times cheaper than you before insurance like a GP visit costing let’s say 30 EUR, while in the US you’d pay 300 US$ (Giving a doctor seeing 6 patient per hour revenue in the 1800 US$ per hour that’s just ridiculous, even when deducing taxes/rent/insurance and more). This is also why medical tourism is a thing.
That said, a big limit, is do you want to be away from your loved ones, in a country you don’t speak the language post surgery ?
That $300/visit doesn’t go to the dr before it passes through several layers of bureaucracy, each of which skims their fee.
Not to say that doctors aren’t well compensated. They are.
Don’t forget staff payroll has to come or if that too
Medical tourism is a real thing. Whether you will pay less than you would in the US will depend on the country you go to and the procedure. Without insurance you are still likely to pay a lot of money at a private clinic. You also have to factor in whether you will need follow-up appointments and plan for complications because those costs plus the costs of multiple overseas trips and living accommodations will add up.
Yes. I didn’t go to Europe but went to mexico for dental work. It doesn’t matter where but some places are obviously cheaper than others.
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.
I wouldn’t call it an issue, though, more like working as intended. I have no problem with paying for state health contributions even though I don’t use the services that much myself. Because it brings up the overall health for everyone around me which also benefits me indirectly. Think of it as an investment.
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.
Here’s the story of an American woman who needed urgent care while in Germany, they also go into the cost of it all: https://youtu.be/G-p1nP6hH6U
It used to be going to Cuba to get healthcare! Now there’s too many problems there to actually consider it
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.
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.
$5K would be cheap for all that.
Like kamala said; “Do not come”
Eh, why not let them dump their money into European economies?
