Jane - You can exercise your right to choice. From our experience this year, if you are retired, you just walk into a GP surgery and you get seen - they don't ask for any paperwork. We were referred to a UK hospital for blood tests and injections with no problem. It just fell down when when the NHS failed to send the test results to the consultant in France.
My point is why worry about getting treatment in UK when you can get it here and the UK still pays?
You make a very good point about our rights as UK citizens, but I get very annoyed by some other expats who move here and then complain about everything in France. As for French bureaucracy, we all made an initial choice to move here in the first place.
I know Brits who complain bitterly about their treatment here, but in most cases, it is down to their not trying to speak the language, getting themselves up-tight and being rude, then wondering why the French won’t help them. We just have to get used to the fact that we chose to live in a different country where things are done differently.
Dave, the point is that from now on we have the choice, or are supposed to have. We still have no idea as to how we are to access this choice which was announced as being from the 6th April.
Anything which removes French bureaucracy has to be better.
Hello Jane and Doreen - I did see two people but at the same appointment, so no problem there. It is reasonable to expect that the surgeon would not spend his time operating eye test machines. I know that Opticians here don't do eye tests so you must see an Ophthalmologist or surgeon, but I would much rather do that than use some of the high street opticians in UK
I had my appointment courtesy of my wife. She only had to wait about three weeks. I was offered an appointment the same day when I went with her but had to settle for one a couple of weeks later because I had forgotten the essential identity docs you need here to do anything (including getting a new SIM card for a mobile!). We did drive about an hour, but a shopping trip and some time in a Salon de thé with some rather special chocolate cakes made up for that!
I have heard lots of moans from expats that you can't find a decent dentist or get appointments with any specialists for months, but we have never had a problem. You may have a bit of a drive, but we just make it a day out. We have an brilliant dentist who speaks English just half an hour away, a podiatrist in the same office as our GP who will give instant appointments, and two ophthalmologists each about an hour away.
I have had a precautionary brain scan at just three days notice and my wife has had all sorts of scans at little or no notice with results same day or a couple of days later. Our only recent experience of UK was when we went back for a family wedding earlier this year. She was having chemo, and went back armed with a consultants letter for an important blood test between sessions. We had the test at a local GP with no problem, but we never saw the results and they were never faxed to her French consultant as requested. And that was for vital cancer treatment....
If I was ever taken ill in UK, I would want to do everything possible to get back to France for treatment!
Exactly Dave, you do have to see two people, one for the health of the eye, glaucoma and diabetes etc. and the other to test your eyesight. Here in the Clunysois we have to have separate appointments for eye tests and eye health checks.
My post did not imply that you cannot health checks, it is often more time consuming.
One can have dodgy prescriptions anywhere.
Jane - I don't know where you get or information from or where you get your healthcare, but I had my last eye test at a consultancy where the vision tests were carried out by assistant using various machines, and I was then seen by the resident consultant eye surgeon (who performs the eye operations at the local hospital) who carried out a full health check. The office then issues a prescription which I used to buy my varifocal photochromic glasses on line.
I subsequently had an eye infection and my doctor got me a same-day appointment with a different consultant an hour's drive away. I have a future appointment booked with him for a up-date on my eye tests. Again, the consultant does the tests and gives a full medical health check. I think it costs about 43 Euros, a small price to pay for peace of mind.
For what it is worth, my last new glasses on-line from France were a fraction of what I paid on my last visit to a well know high street optician.
This service is far superior to that offered at UK opticians. In UK, I have had some very dodgy prescriptions, even one where the person prescribing made a massive error writing my astigmatism correction - so my new glasses only worked if turned them round 90 degrees and held them sideways!
Sorry, but your letter implying that we can't get health checks here is wrong. If you use the system here, it works efficiently and in your best interests. There is absolutely no need to go back to UK.
Thank you Brian.
As you say, we are already having 70per cent of our health care paid for by the British Government.
If someone makes a promise, as did the British Government, they should stick by it. We have now been granted the choice to pursue medical treatment in either the UK or France.
It seems it is necessary to get the facts clearly stated again
1. This issue concerns those British Citizens who are over retirement age who reside in all States of the EU.
2. The UK is under EU regulations the 'competent State' for the financial support of all such citizens - they who should be holders of the S1 formula. If you are not in this category it does not concern you.
3. The health care of these pensioners is paid for NOW by the NHS to the level that the French State (in France of course) would pay their own citizens.
4. All that Jane is pursuing is that such pensioners should not be denied treatment in the UK if they need it.
5. Although such pensioners come within the physical organisation and treatment by the French medical system and are cared for as though one were French, In actual cost terms we cost the French system nothing, for our costs are either paid for by the NHS, or our 'mutuelles' or our own pocket - usually a bit from each.
6. Very many such pensioners not only obtain the vast bulk of their income from the UK, a great many are actually taxed by the UK and thereby actually feed some funds to the NHS. This taxation is established by law.
7. It is a fact that although many British pensioners have chosen to live in France (etc) for various reasons the ties to the UK remain very great indeed.
Thankyou for your support Angela, wow Thankyou for the compliment, though I can’t really see how my age, or lack of it should determine which subjects Iam allowed to have an opinion in?? Anyway I am older than you seem to think and I actually at the moment still working for the NHS, so I actually do feel entitled to have an opinion. Yes, Catherine, I have been nothing but polite, but I would still argue this case if Jane was sitting around a table from me.
Sorry guys but I totally agree with Kate. We all have a choice. If you opt out of the UK and no longer pay taxes or own property there why should you be able to take advantage of our already stretched NHS. You have the choice to opt into the French system. I am tax resident in Britain and also a council tax payer; when I am in France I expect to pay to see the doctor and thus far have rarely bothered with the E111. You can't expect to cherry pick the things you like about each country. I lived in the Far East for many years and paid tax there and other social charges. I don't expect to be able to use the health service in either HK or Singapore now that I am no longer resident. As a tax payer I object to funding an NHS for British citizens who have opted to live elsewhere.
Kate, this is democracy in action, not moaning.
From your photo it looks as though you are too young to be a retiree anyway and this does not even apply to you so I cannot understand why you are so keen to be so perjorative.
Or, perhaps that is exactly the case?
Thank you for that Kate. However please make sure your posts adhere to our Netiquette policy - i.e I'm sure you wouldn't have spoken to Jane like that if you were actually sitting in my kitchen talking to her rather than posting on my site!
And - this isn't particularly directed at you but it is something that comes up time and time again; most of us do NOT know the background to other members being in France and not everyone has chosen to be here by any means. So please lets not assume! Thanks!
This is Kate that is commenting. I think I should be allowed to state my opinion also, just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean to say I have nothing valuable to add. I just feel some people moan when they should be so happy to be living in France, if they have chosen that life. There are always ups and downs to every choice you make! Yes, I will change my profile picture, sorry.
John (or Kate), if you have nothing useful to add to this informative thread then I suggest you abstain from making pointless inflammatory remarks. Please can yo also change your profile name so that we know who you are and upload a photo of yourself or leave the default one.
John and Kate, B ritish citizens living in France and in possession of a form S1 have the right to access NHS treatment in the UK since the 6th April 2015.
Because there has been no protocol put in place to allow this to happen we are complaining.
This is a right we ate being denied, we are not just moaning.
I wish you had bothered to understand why this needs to be done instead of sounding off.
Have you got nothing else to do??? Seems to me you are very bored, wasting your time moaning over something that at the end of the day was your choice. Go back and live in the UK if you want to take advantage of all the NHS had to offer. Stop Moaning! And enjoy your chosen life in France!
I have sent the following letter to the Overseas Health Team at the D o H in London:
This is taking too long and I have had brought to my attention a situation where a British retiree living in France has been denied access to an NHS eye test because she has not been registered with a British GP for six months.
You may or not be aware, but here in France when you need to get a new prescription for your glasses the prescribing optician does not carry out any health checks n your eyes as is the case in UK, so British retirees living in France often have this done when they return to UK to visit friends and family.
We did this earlier in the year, just a few days before April 6th, so had to pay for our tests.
I have been in touch with my MP and will also be contacting the Press if nothing is forthcoming within the next week.
We will not allow ourselves to be treated as second class citizens just because we have exercised our legal right to live in a European country.
It needs to be brought to the attention of your political masters that we will have our voice heard.
Unfortunately, it seems that half of this office is on holiday, as are all of our MEP's., who I have also contacted.
I have also rung the Westminster office of my MP, Neil Carmichael, and left a 'phone message so that he can be inno doubt that this matter needs to be treated with urgency.
It seems that we are still of no importance and that the Government will not be spending any money on NHS treatment for British ex-pats living in France and coming to UK.
Jane, Our doctor frequently takes calls during our consultancies. Does not worry us. We have even helped translate! He works on his own, answers his own calls and keeps his own diary. Typical consultation can last 30 or 40 minutes. In UK, we had to make an advance appointment to call a doctor by phone!
For every upside in life, there always a downside. You have to look at the overall picture.