An historic vote in the European Parliament on Jan. 19th paved the way for residents to seek health care anywhere in the European Union, expanding rights that would primarily help patients with rare diseases and people living near national borders.

The Cross-border Health Care Directive, penned in 2008, should become effective in 2013. The most obvious beneficiaries will be patients seeking advanced treatments, those living along borders where the nearest hospital is across the line, or those who work in one country but want to get treatment near family members in another country.

Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, MEP S&D Germany, said: "We now have the second reading today in one of the most important pieces for citizen's rights: the Cross Border Healthcare Legislation, which will enable patients, in the future, to have healthcare treatment in another Member State and to be refunded by their own Member State insurance system. There are certain conditions under which that is possible: if it's ambulant care, the patient can go directly, if it's hospital care, the patient has to ask for authorization."

She said: "A lot of Member States, mostly all those not with the best care systems for their citizens, where people either have long waiting times or where perhaps the quality is not adequate, they were not so keen to have this legislation, because they were afraid that it could be a disturbance of their situation in the Member States, for the Health situation, so we have to do a lot of compromising so that the member States recognize: no, we do not want to interfere into their Health systems, no we do not want to disturb their Health systems, no we do not want them to close down their hospitals, quite to the contrary, we want to enable them to make a better system for their citizens and we want to enable them that their citizens can stay and want to stay in their Member States."

Health systems are primarily the responsibility of EU member states, but in some cases, as confirmed by several European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings since 1998, EU citizens may seek health care in other member states, with the cost covered by their own health systems.