A FLEXIBLE FRIEND THAT’S AZURE THING
Before you jet off, sign up for EU card
It’s an idyllic summer’s day on a Greek island. You’ve just arrived the night before and so, after a leisurely breakfast, you don the swimming togs and take the three-minute stroll from your little hotel to the beach. It’s close to noon, it’s late June and it’s very, very hot. You can’t wait to get into the cool Mediterranean, so in you plunge. After a few minutes of bliss you make your way out again but, due to the combination of the fierce heat, the cold water and an underlying minor health issue, suddenly, you collapse in the water. There’s pandemonium.
Eventually, with the help of a local doctor, a Scottish doctor on holiday, a Scandinavian nurse, also on holiday, and your own family members, you are lifted from the water and, gradually, you start to come round. The doctors aren’t happy, however, and insist on calling an ambulance to take you through the mountains to the nearest hospital which is on the north coast of the island, about two hours away.
Once there, you are admitted through A&E, assessed by a medic, blood tests are done and you are despatched to another part of the hospital for X-rays and scans. Then back you go to the A&E to await your results.
Meanwhile, here’s another scenario.
You’re in an Italian city. It’s the month of March and there has been an extraordinary snowfall overnight. You’re out early, taking a few photographs before the crowds spoil the look of this beautiful, sleepy, snowbound city. And you fall. Flat on your back on a bridge with metaledged steps. You know very quickly that something isn’t right. But you’re convinced that a lie down and a couple of Paracetamols will do the trick. They don’t. The next morning, a Friday, you can hardly get out of bed. Hospital beckons.
Once there, you are examined from top to toe, quizzed by the A&E consultant, sent off for scans and X-rays and all manner of tests.
You’ve broken a rib and you have a serious ‘contusione’ on your lung. You’ve badly bruised it, in other words. So, because infection could set in, you are admitted, monitored, and pumped with intravenous antibiotics for 72 hours. Finally, late on the Monday afternoon, you are discharged.
And the point of these two tales of holiday woe?
To reinforce that accidents happen and illness occurs on holidays. That’s the way life is. And the last thing you need when such things befall you away from home is more stress over hospital fees and payment arrangements.
In the cases cited here – my brother-in-law’s collapse in Crete and my late husband’s fall in Venice – both were stress free on that count. Why? Because of a little blue piece of plastic called the European Health Insurance Card, left. Once produced, in each case, the hospital administrator’s eyes lit up and it was all systems go. And we left both hospitals without paying a cent. As it happens, my brother-in-law is British. And now that Article 50 has been triggered on Brexit, exactly where will that leave him and other British citizens when it comes to health cover in Europe in years to come?
The answer is that we simply don’t know.
What I do know is that the little blue card – free of charge to everyone in the EU – is worth its weight in gold.
So this summer be thankful that here in Ireland it is still your entitlement. And don’t, under any circumstance, ever leave home without it.
‘Accidents happen and the last thing you need is more stress over hospital fees’