The UK has left Europe. Our membership of of the EHIC card scheme will expire at that time. What happens next?
EHIC card: The UK has left Europe... - Atrial Fibrillati...
EHIC card
Written by
Ianc2
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25 Replies
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You use travel insurance
Quite a lot of people, especially as they get older, develop 'pre-existing conditions' which are often classified as being 'under investigation'. The EHIC card covers these conditions . If you present yourself at a casualty department you will get treated. They won't pay to get you home, but you will still be alive.
At the end of the year the governments involved sit down, work out who owns what and settle up.
Private health care is much more difficult for anyone who fits into the above category. I have an implanted recorder to track what is going if I have some sort of suspected cardiac event, implanted following a fainting event last summer to investigate what is going on. As soon as you declare this to a travel insurance company they beat a rapid retreat, even the specialist companies. and decline to provide cover.
Catch 22. The EHIC card covers all pre-conditions and anyone who has ongoing investigations for undiagnosed conditions. It won't pay to get you home
But surely you take travel insurance as well, excluding the undiagnosed condition? As you said EHIC won’t get you home and there are frequent times when somebody needs air lifting home with a doctor on board. For example following an accident, heart attack, stroke etc.
The trouble is that when you exclude a condition, it would exclude in your case, anything to do with heart and circulatory system.
If you need repatriation it will cost tens of thousands of pounds, in addition to hotel costs for your travelling companion.
If you mean health reciprocal agreements - then they cease as there is No Deal. Everything ceases on Jan 1.
And expect to see a price increase in travel insurance for Europe generally. And be very careful with travel insurance as when we were stuck in Maderia in February, we were not able to claim back anything other than cost of replacing emergency meds - my husband hadn’t renewed his card! It costs us an extra £1600 in hotel and travel costs because the airline cancelled the flight at very short notice. Thankfully because the airline cancelled whilst other airlines continued to fly, we were able to reclaim on the airline.
Don’t travel unless you can pay upfront for unexpected delays was my lesson.
I believe we have already made an agreement with Spain to continue cover, I believe the government are hoping to get same agreement with other EU countries but I always have private insurance as well
Yes, I have heard this on the grape vine, but when you try and find anything in writing it all seems to vanish. On the Spanish border with Gibraltar the local Police are starting to ask for international driving licences and green card insurance cover documents.
A lot of the Brits who live in Spain are rushing to get their 'Residencias', become Spanish nationals and take out private insurance until they can join the Spanish system. However this enables the Spanish tax authorities to examine your world wide assets and charge a wealth tax .
The people who are being caught in the middle are the older snowbirds who headed south for the worst of the winter and relied on the EHIC system to keep them safe. They have also restricted the amount of time you can stay to 90 days with no return for 90 days. Sales of motor homes are doing very well as a result. As our politicians are fond of saying 'Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
When we had a home in Spain we took out annual emergency cover locally - it was a lot cheaper than travel insurance. I only had to use it once but it was excellent service as I got to see a doctor within 30 mins at their clinic. I had to pay for the meds. I think it cost us about €180 annual for 2 of us, but that was a few years ago. If you go to Spain frequently or have a holiday home there it’s worth investigating.
Bit more now! helicopterossanitarios.com/...
The simple answer is that, unless something changes, we will all need private insurance from 1st January.
This will be expensive if you are old or have pre existing conditions.
Insurance has always been advisable to cover for repatriation etc but now will be needed for medical treatment alone. The cheaper policies required you to use your EHIC card when possible so these prices will go up.
If you are in your seventies with diabetes, heart conditions etc you are looking at around £300 for ten days - and if you don't declare all conditions then the policy won't pay out if needed.
We have done a considerable amount of investigation on this, as we have a second home in Spain. As you rightly point out, any cover provided by the EHIC card is currently due to end on 31 December. There may be some form of reciprocal arrangement in the future but this hasn't been agreed at this point. We have always had private travel insurance (including air ambulance repatriation) through our Nationwide Flexplus account but have never had to use it. Our local clinic and hospital have both provided excellent service when our family we have been in need of it including broken wrist, bronchitis, ear infection and prescriptions.
To qualify for residencia you must stay in Spain for the majority of the year and this means you will become subject to Spanish tax on all of your earnings worldwide. You need health cover to get residencia which means either taking out Spanish medical insurance or, if you are retired, asking the UK for a S1 form for free cover, but this means you no longer qualify for non-emergency medical care in the UK. If you have residencia your driving licence must also be changed to a Spanish one (otherwise sit the Spanish driving test after the end of this year).
Unless something else is agreed in the meantime, the rules regarding visits to Europe are regulated by the Schengen visa system which restricts visits to 90 days in any 180 (counting backwards from the date of exit). So, for example, if you wish to visit for 50 days in the spring and 50 days in the autumn, you must be out of the zone for 90 days in between. And a weekend break in Paris will eat into that allowance.
There is a (currently poorly supported) petition on the go that seeks to encourage the UK government to attempt to extend the 'visiting right' to Europe, see petition.parliament.uk/peti... .bgvbc - if any travellers on here are interested!
Signed.
Signed.
Thanks Irene for your comprehensive explanation. Fortunately we are also with Nationwide Flexplus but we have just received notification that as from January 2021 we will not be covered from ill health due to covid19. The only thing we are not covered for During these strange times apparently is travel disruption.
We are currently in France having decided to stay here throughout the 4 week UK lockdown, preferring Confinement here with much better weather and access to the mountains.
As for after December 31, who knows?
Even though I had an EHIC I always took out medical insurance when visiting continental Europe.
Petition signed also.
Total nightmare for me. Without a reciprocal arrangement the EHIC finishes 31st Dec - I think it's unlikely such an agreement will be put in place. No deal = no travel. As long as the FCO advise against travel to certain countries you won't get private insurance anyway. The insurance companies might take your pound but they won't pay out.
Link here for email updates and info about where you want to visit.
Paul
Edit - Before I was diagnosed with afib a few years ago my travel insurance was about £25 a year for world wide cover (excluding the USA and Canada). Now it is reaching an 'eye watering' amount for the same. Before long I feel the travel insurance will cost more than the travel. For me though I've had a 'lost year' travelwise in 2020 - come March next year I might just take my chances and resume my travel but make sure my debt card is firmly in my back pocket - just in case I need to pay for emergency treatment.
Is a CTA (common travel area) agreement with Ireland that includes health! So all holidays must be taken there and must include rainwear and wellingtons 😂
Just visit the UK ! The scenary in Scotland or Wales far exceeds anything in France or Spain. Why spend money keeping their economies going when ours will need rescueing after this year ?
Visiting Friends, family, milder weather, culture?
I think people aren't understanding the post-Covid world yet. Travel is going to have to be restricted for ten to twenty years to contain mutations whilst we get on top of the problem. The Danish ban will be just the first of many.
And in any case the economy cannot recover if people spend money elsewhere.
I wonder what knowledge base underpins your views?
There are so many complex issues involved in this, it is beyond my small intellect but here are my thoughts:-
COVID is novel and therefore as yet, unpredictable, but it’s not the most critically serious virus that we have come to understand. It’s not the most deadly, in fact I think it ranks No9 but it is one of the most contagious and it has already spread around the world.
The economy, as we know it now, certainly will not survive isolationist policies for very long.
If we restrict travel to other countries to control COVID we must also restrict and police travel within the UK, as Ireland is doing right now with police road screening as you are not allowed to travel more than 5K. I don’t know if you have noticed how evident it is that COVID is spreading along the line of all the major road and rail routes in the UK?
A major part of our economy is generated by people from other countries, tourism, culture and trade visiting us which, if we want that to continue, we will need reciprocal arrangements which ensure affordable healthcare.
Whilst I suspect travel will be more difficult, we will do less of it because it will be a more expensive and more time consuming as we go through screening and may have to put up with quarantine rules, people will want and continue to travel for so many reasons. A part of my family are not UK based and so we will continue to visit each other as and when we are able, as will many others.
Stay safe.
My views are underpinned by every year 1 textbook on epidemiology. Unfortunately politicians either don't read such books, or don't think they can sell what needs to be done to the general public.
Almost every mass movement of the human race has been followed by a pandemic, and that pandemic dies out only when you stop the movement. Look at the Spanish flu. The US was sending ships with thousands of men on them to Europe and over a quarter never made it to the front line. And then the soldiers went home and we had a second wave when people not at the front caught it. But then it died out as people didn't want to travel - men who had suffered the hell of war just wanted to work in one place and go to the one pub on the weekend, so the virus lost its ways of circulating new mutations to those not immune to it.
More recently New Zealand, Australia and China have all suppressed Covid with massive lockdowns, and their economies are doing far better than ours because they aren't being overwhelmed with huge healthcare costs.
So yes, tourism, the great movement of the 21st century, has to reduce massively, just as after WW1, just as sexual promiscuity did with AIDS, where it took 20 years to find an actual cure, just as at Eyam, and just as with every other pandemic.
If people travel within the UK, then of course we will all eventually be infected, but only with the same mutations. That is what is happening now as students move acros the country. Everyone knew this would happen but unless you said they had to go to their local universities, there was little way of stopping this, these people after all being the future wealth creators for our country.
But it is the travelling abroad where different mutations have developed that the risks multiply immensely. So until we have developed a cure, not just a vaccine which we will all need to take two to three new ones every year, my preference, and I expect that of all of the scientists and medics on SAGE even though they can't be seen to say it, is close the airports and ports except for essential business travel with enforced quarantine at the airport as they do in Australia. Even allowing people to travel home creates a huge risk of spreading all the new mutations they are carrying.
And if people have family abroad, until we have that cure, that's what modern communication technology is for.
Good points you make but persuading people to change their behavior, especially when it changes weekly, daily or by the hour, is sometimes contradictory & often vague is a big ask.
Not meant for tourists but for immigrants who have retired.
No matter where you come from. In Portugal once you have residencia you are covered by free state healthcare to the same degree as citizens.
In the UK you get free NHS care if you have Settled Status or Pre Settled Status before 01 Jan 2021 if you are an EU member citizen.
Third country nationals must get Indefinite Leave to Remain status and must pay €675 odd per annum as a NHS surcharge. No date applies.
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