The European Commission is poised to unveil a healthcare package that could give patients new rights to seek medical treatment elsewhere in the EU.
Patients would not have to get their doctor's approval for non-hospital care abroad, commission officials are quoted as saying.
The proposals are due to be announced on Wednesday. They will then be discussed by EU ministers and Euro MPs.
Only costs similar to those in a patient's home state would be covered.
Non-hospital care would be reimbursed by the home state up to the level the patient could expect at home, according to reports.
But the state would not reimburse expensive treatment received abroad that was unavailable in the patient's home country.

Skipping queues

The package is seen as an effort to give patients greater freedom in choosing where they get treatment, and to answer critics who say the EU is too remote from ordinary citizens' concerns.
About 1% of operations carried out across the EU involve people who come from other countries.
But "health tourism" - patients going abroad for treatment - has received wide publicity in recent years.
The commission's package would help bring EU rules in line with European Court of Justice rulings, such as one in 2006, which said the UK's National Health Service should reimburse a woman for a hip replacement operation she had in France.
The woman, Yvonne Watts, won the argument that patients facing "undue delays" in the queue for operations should be entitled to treatment in other EU countries. She paid £3,900 for the operation.
Currently the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) provides emergency care across the EU for patients who fall ill while abroad.
The scheme only applies to those who have health insurance at home.