Although the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) was meant to bring Europeans together, this study shows that it is amplifying social inequalities across regions and classes. First, we evaluate the effects of east–west EHIC mobility, and of Eastern Europeans’ participation in it, on the practice of EU social citizenship rights to access cross-border care along spatial (east–west) and social class divides. We then assess the impact of these mobilities on healthcare resources in Western and Eastern Europe. Our findings show that the EHIC reinforces rather than reduces the spatially and socially uneven access to social citizenship rights to cross-border care. Moreover, EHIC patient outflows from Eastern to Western Europe result in a much higher relative financial burden for the budgets of Eastern European states than outflows from Western to Eastern Europe do for Western European countries. As a result, east–west EHIC mobility is reproducing rather than reversing healthcare inequalities between the two regions. Hence, the EHIC does not fulfil its promise of European social integration – not, however, because it creates a burden on Western European welfare states as often argued in Eurosceptic tabloids, but because it increases social inequalities both inside and between richer and poorer EU member states.

尽管欧洲健康保险卡（EHIC）旨在将欧洲人召集在一起，但这项研究表明，它正在加剧跨地区和跨阶级的社会不平等。首先，我们评估了东西方EHIC流动性以及东欧人的参与对欧盟社会公民权沿空间（东西方）和社会阶级鸿沟获得跨境护理的实践的影响。然后，我们评估这些活动对西欧和东欧医疗资源的影响。我们的研究结果表明，EHIC加强而不是减少了在空间和社会上不平等的获得跨国籍照护的社会公民权的机会。此外，从东欧到西欧的EHIC患者外流导致东欧国家预算的相对财务负担比西欧国家从西欧到东欧的外流负担高得多。结果，东西方EHIC的流动性正在再现而不是逆转这两个地区之间的医疗保健不平等。因此，EHIC没有履行其实现欧洲社会一体化的承诺–但这不是因为它给欧洲怀疑论小报中经常提到的西欧福利国家带来了负担，而是因为它增加了欧盟富国和穷国之间以及贫富之间的社会不平等现象。状态。