| Abstract [eng] |
Essentially health protection systems operate on the principle of territoriality, therefore allowing patients to use free health care services only in their home country. Nonetheless, the right to health protection is secured both by international and European Union (hereinafter referred – EU) law. Right to health protection, as one of social rights, obligates member states to ensure that every person has equal opportunities to get access to high quality health care. Although in EU health care falls within the national competence of the member states, a number of secondary legal regulation institutes exist in the Community, which indirectly, but substantially affect the legal basics of this social sphere. The Court of Justice of the European Communities has also highly contributed to ensuring the right to health protection by concluding that health services and medical products fall within the sphere of the internal market. The work analyses the Court of Justice of the European Communities practice with the intention to reveal how the opportunities to get access to health care cervices for patients living within the EU were expanded thus complementing the fundamental freedoms of the EU. To that end, the concepts of services and goods, their elements, limitations and possible justifications in the sphere of health care are discussed. The work also deals with the competence limits of the member states and the EU, revealing limited discretion of the member states to isolate, by legal means, national health care systems form the application of the EU rules of law regulating the sphere of economic relations. Furthermore, the work aims to overlook the possible reasons of increased patient mobility, the forecasted effects of such process on national health care systems and most recent EU initiatives in the field of cross-border health care having the aim of ensuring that EU contributes to a high level of health protection in all its member states. Finally, by analysing national legal provisions the work aims to reveal the level of implementation of the Court of Justice of the European Communities practice in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania. |
