Healthcare Abroad: Whether You Can Use It Comes Before What It Costs

Healthcare comparisons almost always lead with price. For someone moving country that is the third question, not the first. Ahead of it sit two others: can you use the public system at all, and if you can, how long will you wait.

First question: are you allowed in?

Public access for a foreign resident is not a given, and it is not uniform. In our data it falls into four states, and the difference between them is worth more than any premium.

• With residence — registration gets you in. Most of Europe, Japan, Singapore, Canada.
• With a registration number — Spain and Portugal require an NIE or equivalent first, which takes time you should plan for.
• Emergency only — you are treated if it is urgent and otherwise you are private. Several US cities, Chiang Mai, Mérida.
• Not available — no public route. Dubai and San Francisco in our set.

If a destination is in the last two groups, private cover is not optional and its cost is not a comparison point — it is a fixed cost of living there. That reframes the arithmetic before you look at a single premium.

Second question: how long is the wait?

Among places where you can get in, the spread is severe and it does not track quality scores.

Dublin is the outlier and it is not close: four months to see a specialist, against two weeks in Zurich, Berlin and Tokyo. Ireland scores 72 on public quality, which is mid-table — the wait is not explained by the quality of the medicine, and a quality score alone would never have surfaced it.

London and Vancouver share Dublin's 14-day GP wait but resolve specialists in 45 days rather than 120. If you have a condition that needs specialist follow-up, that single column should probably outrank climate, tax and rent in your decision.

Third question, finally: what does private cover cost?

Monthly private insurance, single and family, in euros:

The spread is a factor of nine for a single person and twelve for a family. New York and Zurich cost roughly what a one-bedroom rent costs in Prague.

Read the three tables together and the ordering changes. Prague is cheap and resolves specialists in 21 days. Dublin costs twice as much and takes 120. Dubai has no public route at all, so its €185 is not a saving over a public system — it is the whole system.

Costs are monthly figures in euros, current for 2026. Wait times are typical public-system figures and vary by region and specialty. Note that the currency metadata on these records is unreliable — several files declare a local currency while the cost fields themselves are named and denominated in euros, which is how they are read here.

Compare cover for your own situation, or see how these premiums sit inside a full monthly budget. This page replaces five separate posts on healthcare cost, prescriptions, emergency room pricing and public-versus-private systems.