to think we're all being manipulated

You can take the Eurostar any day of the week heavily pregnant… or the channel tunnel or a ferry. No need for a dingy my friend.

Yes, but a lot of the unpaid bills are basically an admin thing. I experienced this myself and, back when we were in the EU, I had friends with an EHIC card who needed NHS treatment. They didn't want to see her card! When what was supposed to happen under the EHIC system is they take the details, and bill the other country for treatment. Every other EHIC country does this fuss free. But because NHS hospitals didn't they weren't being refunded. That wasn't EU citizens ripping the NHS off! And just reforming the system and taking the card details would have been easier than leaving!

The same here. Bills going unpaid is a problem but actually taking payment for those bills is a better method. A lot of it isn't down to fraud.

I don't like Badenoch but I'm sorry for smearing her. Partly I was being snide, but also I did want to find a genuine example of someone coming into the UK just for treatment. I'm sure it happened/happens sometimes. As I said- non urgent preplanned operations need to be paid for in advance anyway. Childbirth doesn't count but it's hard to fly into the country when heavily pregnant or ill with another disease you want the NHS to treat. So it's harder to pull that scam because plane companies don't want to deal with labour/organ failure mid flight.

To get operations done you would need to have about 30,000.pounds to cover all eventualities. I know someone who had knee surgery in the UK but lived in America and that's what they had to do.
The 340 million will be for AandE and urgent care. Stuff like, someone breaking their leg while in the UK and needing it pinned and then not paying (I was going to say run of without paying but probably not). It's harder to gain the system now than it was because airlines are stricter about letting heavily pregnant/seriously ill people fly.
There are scams. Eg some around illegal organ donation where the donar pretends to be a family member to get round rules on buying organs. Or surrogacy where "altruistic" surrogates carry someone else's child but all the costs of healthcare are born by the NHS. I'm uncomfortable with that, especially because the people paying for surrogacy are rich. And because surrogacy carries more complications than normal pregnancy. But it's not migrants doing the scamming.

Thank you for being gracious. I may have been a bit sharp.

I’m not suggesting people are all trying to game the system - its just that they are not paying their bills and that is to our detriment.

‘15% of rapists are not known to their victim so it’s fine to let more in.’

That’s not the compelling argument you think it is.

It could be the same reasoning that Biden had - that immigrants are more likely to vote Labour (they think)?

Muslim areas sometimes have bloc voting organised by community leaders so if Labour keep them on side (see Angela Rayners utterly sycophantic meeting with all male Muslim leaders) thru think it benefits them. They have missed the fact that Muslim groups are starting to put forward their own candidates on an Islamic platform to shape things in their favour.

My mistake! So she's another person who didn't take advantage of the NHS! I am sure there are people that did.** But most migrants and visitors to the UK aren't trying to game the system. Even the ones that do use NHS care.

**Though I can't find any examples apart from KBs mother and it turns out I was wrong there.

The birth rate is falling. Why would the NHS invest in services with diminishing demand?

Here’s the data you need on rape and SA stats https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/sexualoffencesinenglandandwalesoverview/march2022

85% of female victims knew their attacker.

This is what we should be shouting about.
No assault is acceptable. It’s facile to say that I’m suggesting we accept a level of collateral damage. I’m trying to point out to you that reaching a zero point of attacks requires understanding where the real crisis is. Following your logic leads us to getting rid of all men in the UK being the way to solve the problem. No men present, all rapes prevented. I mean, it’s one way to do it but it might come across as a bit extreme to assume all men are rapists (although there are schools of feminism that do take that stance)

We’re not arguing ‘it’s shit so let’s make it e shit’. We are arguing that ‘it’s shit, but not for the reasons you think it’s shit’. If we completely closed our borders, the NHS would still struggle. There is no single cause and no magical solution.

YANBU

The government clearly don’t want the boats to stop and mass migration serves them in some way.

Big question is what are they (and those pulling strings) actually up to and WHY?

So many people in the country can’t get NHS dental or timely/life saving healthcare but it’s fine to waste an extra £500 million because it’s only (actually) £13 for every single taxpayer in the UK?

I don’t understand this argument regularly wheeled out which is summarised as “it’s shit anyway so it’s fine to make it a bit more shit”.

This is often used to justify male rapists on women’s hospital wards and many other ridiculous points.

The birth rate is falling. Why would the NHS invest in services with diminishing demand?

Yes, we have plenty if home grown criminals - we don’t need to import more.

The recent and very sharp rise in rapes is rather interesting though given the recent and very sharp rise in men coming in from countries where apparently rape is illegal (if you listen to their defence in court).

We are currently waiting for the government to release figures - they have been suspiciously reticent on this.

Do point out where I have said that no immigrant contributes to the system. I haven’t assumed any such thing.

The current situation IS having a negative impact directly on many people and indirectly to society. The women and girls already raped harassed and in some cases murdered by men in immigrant hotels were victims of entirely preventable crimes. If those men weren’t here or were held in secure accommodation - those horrific life changing crimes wouldn’t have happened. How many rapes and murders do you find acceptable collateral damage?

We can’t spare £2 billion per year to spend on hotels for immigrants plus however much we are spending on taxis, private healthcare and prosecuting some of them for rape it murder snd fighting the ‘human rights’ lawyers to try and get them removed from our country.

Rachel Reeves has black holes in the budget all over the place and is cutting services and upping taxes wherever she can. We can’t afford this.

Except that St Theresa’s maternity hospital was taken out of the NHS in 1967 and was run privately by nuns until its closure.

If you’re going to try and cast shade on Kemi Badenoch, get your facts straight.

from the Lost Hosputals of London

In 1967 the South West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board decided to withdraw its grant of £77,000 a year on the grounds that a new maternity unit of 35 beds was being made available at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton (and that it was now government policy to locate such beds in a district general hospital for safety reasons).
Despite a petition of 35,000 signatures and a 'march of prams' to the House of Commons in protest of the withdrawal of the subsidy, the Board carried out its plan and, from January 1968, NHS patients were referred to Queen Mary's Hospital. The Hospital, now deeply in debt due to its latest extension, refused the offer of an alternative contract from the Board to provide care for geriatric and chronically sick patients on the basis that converting the buildings for such a purpose would be prohibitively expensive.

£340 million per year would make an enormous difference over five years to maternity services! It’s the principle that people actually fly in to get their operations done, because it costs £15,000 in their home country. We are footing the bill. It is theft.

£340 million per year would make an enormous difference over five years to maternity services! It’s the principle that people actually fly in to get their operations done, because it costs £15,000 in their home country. We are footing the bill. It is theft.

The 340 million on "health tourism"
Deliberate health tourism definitely happens. E.g:
Olukemi Olufunto "Kemi" Adegoke was born on 2 January 1980 in Wimbledon, London.[14] Her mother Feyi had travelled from Nigeria to the United Kingdom for medical treatment, and gave birth in St Teresa's Maternity Hospital. This was before the British Nationality Act 1981 abolished automatic birthright citizenship for those born in the UK; Feyi then returned to Nigeria shortly after Olukemi was born

However, there are more restrictions on it than there used to be. It would be harder, these days, to do what Kemi Badenoch's mother did in 1980. Childbirth aside, for non urgent treatment you need to pay up front. I think usually you need to have a significant sum to cover any eventualities that is then refunded afterwards.
Urgent treatment they can't refuse but they are supposed to ask for payment later. If you had to prove you were a UK resident before said urgent treatment that would be tricky. You can't whip your passport out if you are lying in the road unconscious. And people often turn up to hospital in a hurry and don't think to bring their ID, proof of residence etc with them. The NHS is supposed to bill non UK residents they have treated. Other countries do this -Germany, Netherlands etc. Either the person pays (and claims back on their insurance) or the insurance pays the hospital directly. It's not rocket science.
The problem is, the NHS isn't set up for this, so most nurses etc will look blank if you ask how to pay. It isn't always a case of foreign visitors deliberately scamming the NHS. A lot of the people receiving care will be tourists not illegal immigrants, not even immigrants. IE people having accidents when on holiday the same way Brits fall of balconies in Spain. I agree hospitals should do more to actually take the money owed. Maybe it's something Wes Streeting can do when he looks into making NHS admin more efficient.
But ultimately it's an admin failing. You can fix it by fixing the admin. Or you can fix it by banning all foreigners from our shores but in so doing we would lose a lot of tourist revenue. So the admin route seems better.

I have personal experience of this as at one point I had been living elsewhere for 5 years so was "non-resident" even though I am a UK citizen. I went to hospital with possible concussion and they glued my head together but seemed uncertain what to do with my health insurance details. The Doctor didn't know about that stuff. I think I found someone at an admin desk in the end and left it there. NHS emergency departments aren't set up to collect payment or insurance claims. That could be changed and should be changed. But I still dont think people like me, and tourists, and non-residents should be refused entry to the UK or treatment.

So less than a tenner per British person then?
I agree with you it’s not ideal but even if all that money could be saved it still wouldn’t go a very long way to sorting out the NHS.

So less than a tenner per British person then?
I agree with you it’s not ideal but even if all that money could be saved it still wouldn’t go a very long way to sorting out the NHS.

Tell you what, you campaign about that topic and others will campaign about the other issue and if we win we might end up better all round.

I don’t see why do many people object to campaigns on one topic that clearly affects many on the grounds that there are so many other topics to get sorted.

And just for clarity, the NHS spending millions and millions on foreign language interpreters, on site healthcare for immigrant hotels, taxis for those who don’t get on site care, free dentistry, not to mention healthcare tourists with unpaid bills while UK citizens pay into the system get none of those things is not good.

For example, the NHS loses £388 million per year from the unpaid bills of health tourists.

It spends approx £174 million per year on foreign language interpreters.

We don’t know yet how much the taxis and healthcare to hotels is costing but it is rapidly growing.

Thats £500,000,000 per year spent on things that don’t benefit any UK taxpayer. While many U.K. citizens no longer have access to dentistry or effective healthcare.

Why aren’t you complaining about that?