I have a question regarding residency and medical issues in Italy.

We have bought a house in Abruzzo and will shortly be moving over with two of our children.

Although we have no permanent home in UK and the property in Italy will be our only home I feel a little uneasy about a couple of things.

We have been told that we will need to have €10.123,36 in a bank account for a family of four and this will have to be verified by the commune with the bank. Is this a normal request for EU members or only for non EU members?

We are thinking that the house, being typical of Italian properties we have seen, is in need of a lot of work and money isn't exactly plentiful.

Also, we are now both retired although our daughter is 16 and our son 33 and they will both be coming with us. The son to do the work and the daughter to moan. I am wondering if anyone knows if we will still be able to come back to the UK to see our doctor. Both my husband and I have health issues and I honestly would feel better knowing I could come back and see our doctor here.

When they were last over, my husband and son attempted to get residency at the commune but they had the wrong health papers. If we reapply for residency, does that mean that the authorities here in UK will not then allow us to see our doctor in the UK.

I am sorry if I have confused what should be a simple question,but if anyone can fathom it out could you please reply.

Many thanks.

Carol

This is a real minefield - I think if you ask 20 people you will get 40 different answers. It really depends on the commune, and who(rather than what) you know. Sorry to be so negative, but we have been here since December, 2006, and are still trying to sort this out, and we have my 80 year old mother with us.

Dear Margaret M,

Thank you for your reply.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you cope with the medical situation?
I would appreciate hearing from you with anything you can tell us.

Best wishes,

Carol

If you move from the UK you are supposed to tell your doctor etc.
You can`t be a resident of another country and expect to get treatment in the UK.
If you have paid your stamp up to date you can get an E106 form that will cover you up to 2 years in some EU countries till you get on their system, Check at DWP site.
If you are retired then you get a different form that covers you in some EU countries fully.

I have the E106, which would cover me up to January, 2009, but since our Commune have issued me with a Libretta Sanitoria, and registered me with a doctor, then I don't want to rock the boat by now trying to use the E106, and them then telling me I must get private medical insurance.

I don't expect to get treatment in the UK, although I have paid NI until very recently. However, if I retired early in the UK I would still be entitled to medical treatment there, and as we are all supposed to be European, I don't see why I should be treat any differently now - i.e. the UK Government providing us with the forms for retired citizens.

Also I know someone who has had someone at the British Embassy in Rome take this up with the Health Department here, who has confirmed that as Europeans we are entitled to health care, so as I say, it is still a minefield.

Carol, up until now we haven't had much to cope with, but have gone to the local ambulance station, which has an emergency overnight doctor on site, and had treatment there. They have been immensely helpful. I also took my mother to Brindisi hospital when she fell and cut her head, thankfully no real damage but at 80 I wanted to be sure. The only thing we have had to pay for was an X-Ray, and since mum is officially still just here on a long holiday, we could claim that back through her EHIC, but it was so little we haven't bothered.

Once we get our own situation sorted, then we may apply for residency for mum, and get the form entitling her to full treatment in her own right, in the meantime we are assured she can visit our own doctor while she is here.

Hope this helps, but i suspect your own Commune will tell you something different. We have friends here who saw the same lady, at the same Commune office, a week before us, and she insisted they have private medical insurance. We saw her the following week, and got residency without it.

Hi,

If you are a EU resident you should be able to get residency here and then use the Italian health system. I don't see why you need to have a certain amount of money in your account if you're EU. You should be free to live and worlk where you like - that's the point of the EU isn't it? :S If you need to go back the UK to see your doctor you wll be able to, but I'm not sure if you could do it regualry. I'd either get residency here and sign up with the Italian doctors, or not get residency and keep going back to your UK doctor. It's a hard one!

If you move to another EU country the only help you get from the UK is an E106 form that allows cover for up to 2 years, after that you need to be working and on the system where you are or have private cover, unless of course you or your partner are of retirement age.
If you are out of the UK for a certain amount of time you lose the right to health care and need to re register and there is a time delay except for emergency treatment.
If you don`t have cover you could end up with a nasty bill in either country.

.Ariel - the Italian laws for EU citizens changed in Feb '07 - just after Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU. They don't want Eastern bloc citizens using their health system so it has screwed it up for the rest of us. Also why you need to prove income. The amount is for the year, not for a shorter period, it's to prove you can cover yourself and won't have to go to the state for help. This is also why we now need PHI.

As MargaretM says it is a minefield, and what one comune allows, another doesn't. I think the bigger comunes, like Florence, are more on the ball because of the huge numbers of immigrants they get. I should move to the sticks ) !

Carol, it's also entirely possible they will tell you to get lost until you have been here a full 90 days as well - they did me!

I have been paying for what medical care I need, one thing I have discovered is that quite often you don't get charged anyway! The most I have paid is €80 for a paediatrician.

Hello caroljohn,

Reading your post brought a smile to my lips, causing me to remember going throught the same thing five years ago - come to think of it my permesso will be due to expire before long...

When I went to the Questura at Sulmona and let them have a ganders at my then financial sitution they said I had too much money! Oh well, a house restoration has put paid to that.

As regards the tessera sanitaria I just happened to befriend the uncle of a lady who works as the ASL at Sulmona so I was able to sort that out in no time.

Just thinking about it I was in the offices of the Agenzia delle Entrate in Sulmona last week and noticed that amongst just about everything else they now issue the tessere sanitarie there as well - interesting...

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Self Catering Apartment: www.monteviste.co.uk

Clive, that’s because the single card with your ‘codice fiscale (tax identification code) doesn’t get issued any longer. It’s quite a recent thing, but now (if you’re officially resident and have the right to both: codice fiscale and tessera sanitaria) then you’ll get a combined card that’s also your European health insurance card. If you’re not officially resident you can still insist on your right to get a ‘codice fiscale', but they can’t give you a card any longer. You’ll just get a piece of paper with your code.

You need your codice fiscale for lots of things, getting a job, of course, but also just joining the library or buying a mobile phone – so it pays knowing that you don’t have to be a resident yet! This is all done at the ‘agenzia delle entrate’ (inland revenue office)

Although they scrapped the single codice fiscale card, the single ‘libretto sanitario’ (health card/booklet) does still get issued. It includes information about your local health office, your GP, etc. That, you only get if you’re officially resident and you have to go to your local ‘ufficio sanitario’ (health care office) to register with a doctor and get your booklet. Back to the problem of registration…

Carol, I don’t know how good your Italian is and I can imagine that the language barrier might make you even more nervous about using the Italian health service.. (the service itself varies from area to area so I can’t say anything about that) Is there any way you could find out more information what your local Italian hospital is like and if there are any English speaking doctors? The Italian GPs send you to a specialist at the hospital much quicker than your average English GP, and there you’re much more likely to find somebody who’s spent some time working abroad and speaks English. Maybe that would put your mind at ease a little bit about giving up your doctor in the UK.. If your local Italian hospital isn't any good, you might want to check out privte doctors, in the UK or Italy, and see if it would be worth taking out private health care insurance.