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.

and yet upthread, I posted a link to a report quoting staff at St Thomas's in Tooting, who apparently do find this to be an issue

I don't pretend to know the truth either way, but unless the whole thing was made up - in which case the hospital would surely have refuted it - I'm inclined to accept the word of those who work in this field

Well, anyone who works in the field can tell you that being born in Britain hasn't been enough for British citizenship since 1982. You need to have a British parent or a parent with indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

That's why the UK-born children of the Windrush generation have encountered such trouble.

That's perfectly true, Jamie, but it's not the issue which the hospital staff member was reportedly highlighting

I just found it interesting that folk were called "lying racists" for suggesting pregnancy health tourism might be a problem, but that there was no response to a link which appears to confirm this

What page is that on? I've only seen a post claiming that women come in in the throes of labour so their children can obtain British citizenship. A story which persists, despite UK laws having been changed to prevent such exploitation over 30 years ago.

I'm not sure about the page number, Jamie - I've got mine set on a continuous roll - but if it helps, I posted the link on Wednesday at 16.08