BMA vote not to charge "health tourists"

[IrmaFayLear]

Quite cross about this.

Different of course if someone has a heart attack/car accident, but to turn up specifically to access expensive maternity/cancer etc treatment is not only unacceptable but unsustainable.

Particularly annoyed because the pil's dementia care which they had to self-fund ran into many hundreds of thousands (at a humdrum establishment, too).

It sticks in one's craw to be told constantly that the NHS is crumbling but that an extra couple of billion per year is ok for health tourists.

In Germany we have health insurance chip-cards (for private and social healthcare - whichever system you're in, you have the card, which doubles as the EHICS card when you're in other EU countries)

When you go for non-urgent care, your card gets scanned when you book in, if you're taken in an ambulance (eg for heart attack) or you present bleeding all over the place, they give you the necessary urgent care, then scan your card. Nobody who needs urgent treatment is turned away. If you get your urgent treatment and you don't have a card, you get a bill. It works really well.

I have a national insurance number, in theory i could probably turn up at my mum's GP when I'm there and give them that instead of my EHIC card, and tell them I live at my mum's house. I know people do that. So the onus is on the NHS to have a system that can deliver the necessary urgent care then bill afterwards.

There was an article a while ago in the Times about people having fertility treatment in Africa and when pregnant with 6 babies are told to fly to the U.K. to get treatment for the birth.

A link would be nice...

Between a Telegraph article citing various data and a dig here and there my calculations put the money spent on health tourists at 0.16% of the overall NHS budget.

We could call it the Rossetti challenge.

Has a nice ring but since I x-posted, what about the Rossetti-Pratchett citation challenge? Everyone in academia knows, double-barreled is posher.

Actually my mistake plugged in wrong number. Telegraph 'estimate' for health tourism costs (bearing in mind their biases) divide by the NHS budget for the year the article was written gives 0.25% of total budget.

I also think it is interesting that I never once had a British born and raised GP in London. Mostly non-EU as well. And loads of nurses, dentists, even vets. All immigrants.

Coming over here, giving out medical care. Healing the sick. Bastards.

Have you come up with the article yet, OP, or is this some kind of random diatribe?

Has a nice ring but since I x-posted, what about the Rossetti-Pratchett citation challenge?

Ooooo, I like it ! Although we're moving from one area of heated contention (NHS and provision for non-UK invoicing) to another, which is the ordinals of double-barrelling. Alphabetical order always seems fair, and I'm happy with "Pratchett-Rossetti". However, there must be something more nuanced involved, since we have things like Lee & Herring, Mason-Dixon, Sykes-Pickavant.

Is there a pronunciation rule somewhere ?

As posters can tell, we've hit one a much more serious issue that needs solving. Fuck the NHS. How do you double-barrel names ?

Is there a pronunciation rule somewhere?

There must be. And it's a time-eater while waiting for the links from OP and PP.

I was recently visited by a friend from the US who, while she was here, fell over and hit her forehead on the corner of a concrete step. She needed an ambulance and stitches, as well as various tests (she was very fortunate that it wasn’t more serious).

Obviously she’s not a so-called ‘health tourist’ - she came on holiday here with full travel and health insurance and she expected to be asked to pay for her treatment. On being discharged she asked where she should go to arrange payment. She was waved out of the hospital.

I understand all the arguments about protecting the vulnerable, but it seems bizarre to offer free health care to people like my friend who a) aren’t entitled to free healthcare here and b) aren’t vulnerable and don’t need it to be free, because they’re able to pay? Deploying the ambulance alone must have cost thousands!

I’m a doctor.

Health tourism is barely a problem. It accounts for roughly 0.3% of health expenditure. That’s nothing! We’d probably spend that much establishing a billing system and chasing people for payment.

Relax about this topic. It’s juwt not that big a deal. Perhaps we should be impressed that doctors - a group of well-off, privileged, educated people - have the socialist and moral backbone to oppose forcing people to pay. That’s the real story here.

Interesting article here on a site "for healthcare leaders" about St George's Hospital in Tooting:

www.hsj.co.uk/st-georges-university-hospitals-nhs-foundation-trust/home-office-very-keen-for-patients-to-prove-right-to-nhs-care/7011370.article

"St George’s has been “made aware that individuals are currently offering paid assistance to women in Nigeria to have their babies for free on the NHS” at St George’s because the trust is viewed as an “easy target”"

Actually my mistake plugged in wrong number. Telegraph 'estimate' for health tourism costs (bearing in mind their biases) divide by the NHS budget for the year the article was written gives 0.25% of total budget.

The same way that Benefit Fraud is dwarfed by the amount unclaimed in benefits - by a factor of 11:1. So for every £1 lost in benefit fraud, there's £11 the government keeps in the bank.

It's best to leave it there, since the amount uncollected in tax is tens of billions - which makes benefit fraud negligible.

Here's a picture. Any posters feel like answering the question on it ?

Health tourism is a tiny percentage to the point that its a non issue, especially if it means compromising the idea of universal healthcare. Get wound up about something that matters.

NHS overseas patient's £330,000 unpaid bill www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38809530

Many other stories of this type on reputable nonDM websites. But if the consensus is that it's not an real issue then the NHS will be fine won't it?

@PaddyF0dder

What I don’t understand is, when people say ‘it’s not a big deal, it’s only 0.3% of the budget’ - how do you we KNOW it’s only 0.3% of the budget? If entitlement to receive NHS services isn’t checked at the point of use, and there’s no proper invoicing system in place, then how is illegal use of the NHS tracked and by whom? Who counts as a ‘health tourist’?

I’m not trying to be snarky btw - I’m not a healthcare professional so I don’t know and I’m genuinely interested in the answer.

So you've found one article, marylou. So what? Do you think the woman in question has £300,000 and is wilfully not coughing it up? Should her babies have been allowed to die because she didn't have it? Even if this would have happened in the US, where the hospital would have 100% sued for the costs, what good would pursuing her have done? She could only ever have paid off a tiny fraction of the cost, she would probably end up declaring bankruptcy, and the cost of the pursuit of the debt might well exceed what she ever ends up paying.

We don't make policy from edge cases and single inflammatory stories, for good reason.

What I don’t understand is, when people say ‘it’s not a big deal, it’s only 0.3% of the budget’ - how do you we KNOW it’s only 0.3% of the budget?

How do we know anything ?

So you've found one article, marylou. So what? Do you think the woman in question has £300,000 and is wilfully not coughing it up? Should her babies have been allowed to die because she didn't have it? Even if this would have happened in the US, where the hospital would have 100% sued for the costs, what good would pursuing her have done? She could only ever have paid off a tiny fraction of the cost, she would probably end up declaring bankruptcy, and the cost of the pursuit of the debt might well exceed what she ever ends up paying.

We don't make policy from edge cases and single inflammatory stories, for good reason.

No I don't think that. I think that she shouldn't have been on the plane without fully comprehensive insurance. This should be a visa requirement for entry into the UK from countries with non reciprocal healthcare agreements.

@Buddytheelf85

I honestly have no idea how they know that number.

But given I’d imagine there would be considerable political pressure to inflate these numbers, I’m assuming it’s probably genuine.

But if there is an actual policy not to charge and to offer free healthcare to anyone, then what would happen then? Should people be able to come and have heart transplants/hip replacements/cancer treatment? What about care home provision? Should that be free for anyone?

300,000 woop - at least that actually went towards providing medical care. Until recently the NHS was forking out millions for bloody homeopathy.

I don’t quite know if these stories of people coming over to sponge are true, but ‘one swallow does not a summer make’.

My SIL has a visa to work over here and part of her visa requirement was to pay a certain amount (NHS top-up) as condition of her visa
here ( I think)

These people who come over here on these visas are usually those who work for the NHS or provide a service

Maybe not every day but it definitely happens in my maternity unit.