NHS bill for £1000

[ladle4455]

My dad, 80, came for a visit from overseas from overseas for three months. He is fit and healthy but its impossible to find health insurance at his age. Anyway, there was a health emergency and we went to A&E. Waited for 7 hours but after 15 minutes of diagnostic tests (x ray etc but no medicines) was told there was no problem. was hugely relieved. I thought there was no charge as it was an emergency but have now been sent a bill for £1000. Apparently the charge for overseas patients is 150% (there times the actual cost) and the test was done by another department not A&E. Any advise? I have to sell my car to be able to pay as I don't want dad to have a debt over him.

Lots of Daily Mail readers on this thread tonight. Maybe Suella will have time to join now she's got more time on her hands.
As others have said it's not your bill, and it depends on the Trust how far they will go to chase your father for the money.
Whilst it is appealing to right wingers to make foreigners pay, the simple truth is that the cost of chasing some non payers is actually more expensive than the costs recouped. And in the case of some denied asylum seekers the threat of action is causing harm to unborn children as mothers are too scared to seek medical care on the NHS.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/23/nhs-trusts-use-bailiffs-collect-debts-ineligible-patients-asylum-seekers-immigrants

£1000 is nothing for a medical bill. A friend’s father needed treatment in America. They were insured but had to argue over it. They also had to pay £20,000 up front and the final bill was £200,000. If he had needed a medical repatriation flight it would have been more than double that.

People who to come to the UK and use the NHS should pay. They should be chasing more of them to pay and denying them anything other than lifesaving treatment necessary in order to get a flight home unless they have means to pay before they leave.

the simple truth is that the cost of chasing some non payers is actually more expensive than the costs recouped.

Then they should pay costs up front or provide sufficient insurance information for the costs to be recovered.

Well exactly. And the people who’d condone that sort of behaviour are probably also those that’d complain that the NHS waiting lists were too long, and the service underfunded!

The logical extension of this is that if anyone is critically ill and needs treatment, they would need to have their ID and/or payment method on them.
I came across a homeless person fitting on the street with a head injury a few years ago and called the ambulance.
I'm glad they treated him immediately without checking his wallet first.

You use the service you have to pay.

But the OP s father was neither pregnant nor seeking asylum , he took a gamble and lost.

Last summer my DH was awaiting a heart check due to recently discovered wider family heart problems, not due to symptoms, and the waiting list meant he didn’t get an appointment until the end of the summer holidays. I tried various specialist travel insurers for our holiday but they all said no as they couldn’t quantify a potential unknown heart problem, so we cancelled our plans and stayed in the UK. If you can’t get insurance and are not prepared to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in medical bills, then you don’t travel.

It's perfectly possible to buy insurance at 80, I have many friends who are over 80 and none would dream of travelling without it. Tell your dad what he owes and make a payment plan to pay it off

I am able to read the OP, thanks.
The point is a wider one to all those who say 'you use the system you pay'....well it isn't that simple.

1. It often costs the NHS more to chase up debts than the debts themselves
2. If you had a pay first system, many vulnerable people would miss out on treatment- see the article
3. To prevent discrimination, every single person would have to prove eligibility before any treatment that wasn't A&E. For most people this wouldn't be a problem, but if this was a rule set in stone then some people would miss out on treatment to which they are entitled.

It's probably a goading post anyway, but the real issue is the shitshow of 13 years of underfunding the NHS, not a relatively small amount of non paying foreigners/ex-pats.

No @Saschka , he doesn’t live here and so isn’t entitled to free healthcare. The NHS is under enough pressure as it is so don’t encourage crappy, fraudulent behaviour ffs.

The crappy fraudulent behaviour that's more concerning is the government and the PPE scandal. My partner had was frontline NHS during COVID seeing patients in PPE that wasn't fit for purpose at the start.

I'm so sorry this has happened @ladle4455 I assumed everyone from overseas (ex pats, and people who are visitors,) were covered under our NHS. For everything. Could have been worse I guess. Would have been 10 times more in America!

Doesn't help you right now though. No advice sorry. I do hope you/your dad get help though from the advice given already on here.

I don’t disagree with you the PPE scandale is a disgrace, but what exactly does it have to do with this? Two wrongs don’t make a right @pleasehelpwi3 😕

Yes.

Because the NHS doesn't operate on a "who deserves treatment" basis. It operates on a "who is eligible for treatment" basis.

If a UK citizen had no insurance and no personal means to pay and they had a heart attack overseas, they'd either not get treatment at all (or only get what they could pay for) or get hounded to the ends of the earth to pay (if they received emergency treatment in advance of payment, perhaps while unconscious).

If the NHS treats those who aren't eligible that means less funds available for those who are eligible.

Which in turn means longer waiting lists for UK citizens, less treatments being funded for UK citizens (eg being told you can't have the gold-standard treatment on the NHS and you have to either pay privately for the gold-standard or accept a second-best treatment on the NHS), with resulting poorer quality of life due to those things.

It's already happening. Ineligible people using NHS treatment for free is part of the reason why.

If he didn’t have to pay, how would that be fair for the thousands of people who make sure they have insurance incase of exactly these circumstances.
i’m surprised it wasn’t more, the reality is that many investigations we take for granted in this country actually cost a lot of money to the NHS. Someone has to pay for it.
I’m glad he is ok and that the NHS were there gor him when he needed them.

You assumed that millions of wealthy Americans could avoid paying for medical insurance and simply purchase a cheap flight to the uk then avail themselves of millions of pounds worth of medical treatments on back of UK taxpayers, for free??

Do you know who he used

I assumed everyone from overseas (ex pats, and people who are visitors,) were covered under our NHS. For everything.

Why would you assume this? The NHS would be in even more trouble than it is already.

He should be able to arrange a repayment plan with the hospital finance department
Don't sell your car to pay his debt

Which country is your dad from? If it is within Europe, hadn't he got a new version of the Ehic card?

You thought every visitor to the UK, even ones who were never resident here, were entitled to everything under the NHS?

i'm guessing you mean emergency treatment but even then, no, that's not possible.

I'm so sorry this has happened @ladle4455 I assumed everyone from overseas (ex pats, and people who are visitors,) were covered under our NHS

@SweetBirdsong did you really genuinely think that anyone could get a flight from anywhere in the world for treatment in the UK and we would all fund that? Come on….