To be proud that the NHS gives free emergency work

[Ellreejeee]

All this talk about charging people and daily mail hate about how awful it is. But actually I think its a great thing to do, and sets a good example for other countries.

Especially with budget airlines someone who can afford to fly to the uk, can still be flat broke. Ive bought flights for less than most short rail journeys in the uk! So lots of these people could be very van u able.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34685022

Agree, there should be more charging not less.

Emergency care fair enough, it's an emergency, medical care is needed.

After that if you need further treatment, and you do not live here and it isn't an emergency, then the person receiving treatment should have insurance/have their details taken to be billed.

At the same time, time wasters who abuse the NHS should be sanctioned in some way.

The NHS is an excellent institution, but the abuse of it and health tourism needs to stop.

What's your definition of an emergency though?

YABU.

People should have travel insurance which covers them in case of emergencies (just like people somehow manage to do when travelling to literally any other country in the world!), and the NHS should have better systems for getting the cost of treatment back.

Money is finite, and resources are already stretched,

Well unless we get to grips with this (among other monetary issues in NHS) we will lose it entirely.

I am terribly proud and grateful for the NHS - that's why I want it to flourish. Some hard lines must be drawn and health tourism is one of them. It must end.

Proof of health insurance or a European health card should be complusory before someone enters the UK with a "health emergency". We need better systems for collecting money from those who should be paying. Certainly I do not want anyone turned away if they are in desperate need of emergency healthcare.

That's a good idea: proof of health insurance at airport. Longer lines for some, but it would deal with the issue of health workers saying it's not their job to police eligibility.

We already have to show passports at the airport. I don't think that it would make the queues that much longer. Maybe people who don't have health insurance could have the option to buy insurance before boarding. Maybe a small amount of profit could be used to pay for extra staff.

Has no one upon high thought of this?! It seems the ideal solution.

YABU

My in laws emigrated over 10 yrs ago. On a recent visit needed emergency treatment and no one would take their money. They wanted to pay.

I know people who have paid or checked, my husband had to present his EHIC card and other id recently for a scan, and a friend of mine's child had A and E treatment and a short stay in hospital and they paid.

It seems the system is chaotic.

We need a system where a person's insurance details are stored on entry. Maybe we could do a simple scan of a finger print when they enter the UK. Schools already use finger print technology to manage canteens.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/6243759.stm

Prehaps every hospital and GP surgery could have a scanner to check the status of a patient. If all the insurance details are on the systen then collection of payments could be done centrally.

Clearly there are some ethical issues that need to be ironed out. For example illegal immigrants or ayslum seekers would need to register and be given temporary access to the NHS while their cases are heard. We need to balance compassion with preventing people taking the piss.

This is a total farce, why has it been left unchecked for so long. We must be a laughing stock to the health tourists.

I don't get this, OP. Take America, for instance. They decide, year after year, that they don't want to fund a health service for themselves. If we were to go there snd need emergency treatment, we'd have to pay. And you wouldn't bat an eyelid. That would apply to almost any other country in the world outside the EU.

I don't see people in those countries agitating for people from the UK to get free medical treatment, either emergency or otherwise. I'm all for reciprocal arrangements based on how we'd be treated abroad. The NHS has a finite pot of funding available. It should be spent carefully.