Krone newspaper is inciting and spreading misleading figures.

The Krone article “Hospital tourists cost billions” is so inflammatory and simply wrong. The crown hits big: 22 million treatments for “refugees and immigrants” between 2015-2024. What is not said: There were over 800 million treatments in total during that period. So the 22 million is about 2.7%. According to Statistics Austria, the nationalities mentioned in the article make up around 4.8% of the population. The bottom line is that non-Austrians actually use fewer services than Austrians. Then it is claimed that many people do not pay “a cent”, but there is not a single proof of this in the article. Especially for people with a Turkish migration background (who make up a large part of the numbers), a large proportion have normal social insurance. I found the part about the alleged “free cosmetic surgeries” particularly absurd. In reality, plastic surgery in the hospital is usually reconstructive (accidents, burns, etc.). The state does not pay for purely cosmetic surgeries. Of course: hospitals are overloaded and waiting times are a problem. But that is more due to a lack of staff, a lack of cash registers and an aging society, not because “foreigners are clogging up everything”. By the way: Over 130,000 people without Austrian citizenship work in the health and care sector. Without them things would really go crazy. What bothers me is not so much that people are talking about costs, but rather how: numbers without context + headline to get you excited.

Is that typical?

Jupp

Those:
https://www.krone.at/4024687 https://kontrast.at/krone-auslaendische-patienten/