Mastodawn

European Commission

In the EU, healthcare is a public service, not a consumer product.

Our latest report shows how Europeans can benefit from it:

💶The average annual healthcare spend per person is €870
🏥68.4% rate their health as ‘very good’ or ‘good’

Full report ➡️ https://link.europa.eu/WHxcQM

Pieter de Bruin 🌍🌈☮️Mar 29

@EUCommission €870 may be a bit optimistic, but I gladly pay my medical insurance of around €1800

European Commission Mar 29

Hi @pdebruin, the average annual healthcare spend per person varies quite a bit between EU countries in fact, from less than €400 per inhabitant in Slovakia, Hungary and Czechia to more than €1 300 per inhabitant in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.
*These stats are from 2023.

@EUCommission not in Italy. A lot of healthcare business open every days and waiting lists in public service are always full.

G 🇮🇹Mar 29

@EUCommission meanwhile in America... "I have a plan, I have a concept of a plan... to let you pay more and more to my health insurance buddies 👍". Who's this? 🍊

Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Mar 29

@EUCommission Obviously not counting Ireland because Ireland doesn't have universal healthcare despite being an EU country...

Memecosystem Services Mar 29

@kelpana @EUCommission I had the same thought with non-EEA immigrants living in Ireland. So many visas require a subscription to private healthcare as a condition of residence.

Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Mar 29

@gcoleman @EUCommission Even if you're a citizen, not having health insurance is a gamble. Primarily because it takes so long to get seen. I'm really struggling to pay the arrears on mine right now due to lack of work.

Memecosystem Services Mar 29

@kelpana @EUCommission While so many Irish nurses and doctors go over to Australia or Dubai for better pay. It's disgusting for a supposedly modern nation with so much in its coffers.

@kelpana @EUCommission
In Switzerland we don't have universal healthcare so to speak, but we have mandatory private health insurance with capped prices and services.
It's been working well until now, recently prices have been going crazy.
I think the Swiss system is a good compromise between avoiding the inefficiencies of the public sector while protecting citizens from abuse of the private sector.
Either way the entire European healthcare system is under stress regardless of the system type.

Alanna 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Mar 29

@mttn @EUCommission Most prices are limited by law here but have been going up rapidly over the last few years.

@kelpana @EUCommission Unfortunately it's the same here, I think it's just a west wide problem.
But I wouldn't be surprised if other countries like China have the same problem.
To me it just looks like everything is getting worse everywhere.

Angela Scholder Mar 29

@EUCommission Not a consumer product? Well, in NL it now is a for profit product...!
There will certainly be medical professionals who want to deliver a service, but the managers and CEOs are working for profit

@EUCommission And why do hospitals need to make wins then? 🤔 Family doctors in Germany don’t own their clinics any more. 🤷‍♀️

@EUCommission ¿cómo hacéis para gastar tanto en salud?

Jan Vlug Mar 29

@EUCommission Cool to see that the whole report under CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/

#CreativeCommons

Homepage - Creative Commons

Creative Commons

@EUCommission if you flip this graph on it's head, it's still significantly better than any healthcare transgender people can receive anywhere in the union.

We're ~1% of your population, yet we receive more hate any other minority in the entire union.

Maybe, just maybe... help? Or do you find a decade long waiting lists while exposed to conversion therapy (which you banned) humane and within reason?

@iamada @EUCommission I was going to say something along these lines but add that I suspect that this hides many an evil about who gets care and who doesn't.

All healthcare in the EU should be available, timely and free.

@iamada @EUCommission also define “needs”. does this truly account for people who have to wait for consultants, those who have to try for years to get neurodiverse support, or is it simply “you got your quarterly nutrition tests vaguely on time”

ArdentArchivist Mar 29

Pay attention, UK & US. 🙄

@EUCommission I bet @ionica has a thing or two to say about that visualization - so you have to ignore the cap and the empty space at the top of the testtube, but what's that scale doing there? Why is there a marker 'at' 97.5%?

Good thing they didn't 'just' take the 'height' of the liquid, but now I'm left wondering if they actually calculated the volume of the lens-shaped component at the bottom or just eyeballed it 😃.

Jonathan👣🚲Mar 29

@raboof @EUCommission @ionica The 2.5% marker is about 3.6% of the visible part of the tube by volume. The 97.5% marker is about 96.9%. Not super bad for eyeballing, but this whole thing shouldn’t be.

@EUCommission is it now?

As a simple NL citoyen, I couldn’t fail to notice that most if not all dentists, vets, and GP practices have been swallowed up by predatory investment firms. Hospitals are also viewed as commercial enterprises, with business KPIs being imposed to assess their functioning.

That’s not a public service. Nor is it a consumer product. It’s predatory robberbaron capitalism.

LC Wanderlust Mar 29

@js @EUCommission this! And the distinction between private and "public" healthcare is so thin that as a patient you don't even know what are you receiving!

Csepp 🌢Mar 29

@EUCommission Hungary is sadly falling behind.

Ignacio (he) 🇺🇦🇪🇸🇪🇺Mar 29

@EUCommission «In the EU, healthcare is a public service, not a consumer product»

Isabel Díaz Ayuso enters the chat

@EUCommission here in Germany it is still a product, with private health care. All the resources should be for everyone, not just the people who can afford it

@EUCommission in the UK NHS is a national treasure and for the most part works exceeding well. i have never understood why the USA tolerates such a divisive expensive health care system

Tonka Bohne Mar 29

@EUCommission let's work toward incorporating the remaining 2.5 % into our healthcare system. I would love to improve my health but am unable to find a practitioner, or practitioners tell me they're not qualified enough to treat me and tell me to keep looking.

In the meantime, I'm unable to work and some people (even politicians) call me a social leech for it.

Btw, I'm a citizen of one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Still no luck.

Dan Bocain Mar 29

@EUCommission Here I am getting fleeced for $1500/mo, to get the honor of paying a maximum of $8100 out-of-pocket, and to browse a physicians portal finder that is completely inaccurate, because FidelisCare sucks.

cid_terron Mar 29

@EUCommission so only 2,5% away from acceptable and ~ 31% away from good work...
Good try, we are sure you can do better

Azarilhⓥ Mar 29

@EUCommission When are European trans citizens get human rights across EU?

KuboF Hromoslav bio/acc 🧬Mar 29

@EUCommission, and with therapies to reverse damage caused by aging we will do even better 😎

☑️ Cath Mar 29

@EUCommission Sounds good!

Could you please inform the Dutch government about this concept?

Because over here, healthcare is almost totally privatised and big business for the sector.

In 2024 311 million was paid to shareholders and the profit was 7,3 billion.

People over here pay about € 1900,-- per year for basic insurance and if you actually need healthcare you pay € 385,-- on top of that. Also many costs of medicines are excluded.

#healthcare #profits

Torparskytt 🏴Mar 29

@EUCommission Possibly true if you for some reason don't count taxes

Eric Lawton Mar 30

This is immoral because
1. Nobody makes a profit: think of the poor private capitalists
2. Lazy people without jobs don't deserve to get health care.

</Sarcasm>

Petr Skála Mar 30

@EUCommission 👍

@EUCommission That 2.5% is Hungarians