R4: For a Healthcare System that enables

Glossary

Disability: permanent or temporary health impairment. This includes - but is not
necessarily limited to - physical and mental disabilities, neurodiversities, and
chronic illnesses.

Health service: service provided by any actor, institutional or not, that
relates to the health sector. This includes - but is not limited to - medical
tests and surgeries.

Healthcare system: conglomerate of institutions and organisation at the disposal
of a certain group of people (generally on a national level) with the goal of
offering health services to them.

Resolution

Healthcare systems should be a life-saving essential tool, not an obstacle to
freedom of movement.

We are supposed to live in an Europe of freedoms. The economic freedom, the
freedom of speech, freedom of cult, and, of course, the freedom of movement
guaranteed to European citizens thanks to the Schengen Agreement.

This last freedom, like the previously mentioned one, is nowadays still
hypocritically considered one of the milestones of the European Union and
Europe, but in reality is a freedom that accommodates only the needs of
privileged people. A freedom available only for those few people who can afford
it (economically and metaphorically). There are a variety of elements in the
system that make this dominance possible; among them, the healthcare system is
one that particularly inhibits people with disabilities and coming from lower
classes.

We, Young European Greens, consider the current absence of a common healthcare
system in Europe a systemic ableist and classist violence against the freedom of
movement of people with disabilities and - on a lower degree - of people from
lower classes.

While the Schengen Area allows all Europeans citizens to move "freely" among the
different countries who signed the agreement, people with certain health
conditions that need treatments and medications often are not able to enjoy this
fundamental rights, either partially (not being able to move elsewhere) or fully
(not being able to travel at all). This happens because of many reasons (e.g.
lack of accessibility in the means of transportation), and the lack of a common
healthcare system is without any doubt an important aspect of this lack of
movement.

Without a common healthcare system, moving across Europe for a person with a
disability could mean not being able to access the medicines that they need to
take regularly to survive or having to pay much more for them, creating a double
discrimination towards poorer people with disability who cannot afford them.

Moving to another country means also having to register for the national
healthcare system of that country, which means also losing every right in their
native country. This means that people who depend on treatments given in only
one of these countries and that depend on these treatments for their survival
have to choose between renouncing their treatment or having to pay thousands of
euros for them. Another option, equally dangerous, is for them to not register
in the new country to avoid losing their rights in their native country.
Depending on the country, this may make them in all aspects "illegal" migrants
who have not affordable access to health services in their new country.

At the end of the day, the fate of the people with a disability are defined by
the national rules of the healthcare systems from the country they move from and
to, and by their wealth, making this a double systemic violence that needs to be
beaten.

For this reason:

we, Young European Greens, ask for:

This is a fundamental step to allow people with disabilities in Europe to have a
normal and dignified life wherever they want to establish themselves.