Patient mobility and healthcare in the EU

Abstract

Since the seminal judgment of the Court of Justice in Kohll, the discussion of cross-border mobility has been dominated by an antagonistic relationship between the national health social contract and the rights of individual patients exercising their rights as health care service recipients in the cross-border context. The adoption of Directive 2011/24 on the Application of Patients’ Rights in Cross-Border Healthcare has not changed this paradigm. The clash between social solidarity and the internal market is reflected in Directive 2011/24 in its conceptually confusing objective to facilitate the access to cross-border healthcare and achieve cross-border patient mobility without encouraging patients to receive treatment outside their Member State of affiliation. This draft chapter for the forthcoming Research Handbook on European Social Security Law edited by F. Pennings and G. Vonk (Edward Elgar) investigates the impact of this antagonistic approach on the coherence and effectiveness of the current network of regulation of cross-border patient mobility. It also presents a critical assessment of the potential of the current regulation of cross-border patient mobility with a view to transformation of the healthcare market into an area of service provision where the interests of mobile patients and the national solidaristic community are not in conflict.