Rules eased on access to health care abroad

GOING abroad for health care, especially for rare ailments and cancers, should be easier for patients under new legislation agreed by the European Parliament.

Cross-border care has been available in principle for more than a decade, but national health departments have made it very difficult to obtain in many instances.

As a result, patients and governments took a raft of cases to the European Court of Justice over the past 12 years to define what people were entitled to.