Illnesses

Hi MissMoney

Being married to your partner should entitle you to health care in Malta if your partner works in Malta and pays NI.

If not married you will have to check if you can transfer your existing health insurance to Malta. If you qualify for the Entitlement you will get the same health care coverage as Maltese nationals (if you are from the EU).

It depends on the personal circumstances.

If you do not qualify any pre-existing disease( CF ) will be excluded from coverage through a private insurance and will have to be paid privatly.

If 'nomen et omen' applys that should not be a problem for you .Private health care coste are lower in Malta than in other countries but drug prices are much, much higher .

Regards

Ricky

YES BUT IS IT NOT TRUE THAT AS AN EU CITIZEN ONE IS ONLY ELIGIBLE FOR THE SAME HEALTH CARE AS MALTESE NATIONALS BUT ONLY FOR 2 YEARS OR IS THIS INCORRECT?

Hi,

These are very difficult questions that can differ in every individual case.

Generally speaking you can only transfer an existing health insurance coverage entitlement from an EU country to Malta by giving up the entitlement in your home country ( for example that means you pay health insurance in Germany but get the coverage in Malta - not Germany).

The UK has special arrangements that are time limited.You will have to check out your personal situation and whether you are entitled.A British passport does not necesarily entitle you anymore.

You will only be entitled to the same health care coverage as is offered for Maltese nationals.

Regards

Ricky

We are married, and British. I need to find out for sure
do you know where I can get this information from?
I need a lot of different medicines, that I take every day
so we need to be sure we can afford it

I keep healthy, and so would love to move to Malta

Also 21,000euro a year do you think that would be enough
to live in Malta?

Thanks

ricky wrote:

The UK has special arrangements that are time limited.

The bilateral agreement isn't time limited, but doesn't cover everything.

Bilateral agreement - If you have a UK passport, a residence certificate/permit for Malta, and declare you live here permanently, then you are entitles to in-patient and out-patient care on same basis as a local. You won't get an EHIC under this.

Also to get medicines for free from the Maltese Public Health system you will have to navigate through the bureaucracy and you might find that the drugs you are taking now are not available here or even if they are theoretically available you might find that are not in stock - I have personal experience of both these situations!

My advice would be to bring extra supply with you if you can to tide you over for the several months it may take for all the paper-work to get completed...and then be prepared to do battle with the system!

Tim

If you are fully entitled to healthcare under the Maltese public system (for example because you pay Maltese social security contributions or are married to someone who does), then you can get free medicines if you are poor (pink card) or have certain chronic conditions (yellow card). 

Here are official details - http://sahha.eu/pages.aspx?page=8 .  I do not see the words "cystic fibrosis" in the list of yellow card conditions, but perhaps it's hiding under cover of some other terminology - you know more than I do.

As others have said, the approval process is quite hard work and takes some time.

If you do have to pay for medicines, they are generally quite expensive in Malta, and almost certainly more costly than UK NHS subsidised prescription charges.

PS - Re "Is €21,000 enough?", suggest you check out the Sticky on "Cost of living in Malta".

Yes - my comments were in relation to Yellow Card chronic conditions. For medicines not covered (such as my son's ashthma medicine) we had a very good experience using an online pharmacy which was MUCH cheaper than buying it through a Malta pharmacy. I will post details if anyone is interested.

Tim

Am interested to know more about this
any help would be great at this time

thanks

This is the Online Pharmacy that we used and are very happy with:

pharmstore.com/

We ordered a 3 month supply of the generic version of Singulair, which our son takes for Asthma - it came to $66 which was less than the cost of 1 month's supply of Singular, about €50 in Malta if I recall correctly. They were very helpful and answered emails efficiently, they even held the order at our request for a few days while we did some research into Customs, and then when they did ship it was from Frankfurt and so was super quick....literally the next day....and no customs problems as it came from another EU country. We haven't needed to use them again yet but would not hesitate in doing so.

Tim

Thanks guys for all the information
its helped me alot,

I sent and email to the Ministry of Health in Malta
and they said I would get free healthcare and Prescriptions
If my husband is paying NI, sounds too easy lol
I need to look into it alot more, also looked at the link
I think I would have to get the Yellow Card for chronic illnesses