Baby denied treatment by NHS because family have overstayed

[wonderstuff]

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/13/erbs-palsy-baby-sanika-ahmed-denied-treatment-_n_2866288.html

Baby will be permanently disabled, losing use of one arm if she isn't treated soon. NHS trust are refusing treatment, because although the baby was born here her fathers work visa ran out several years ago. They are being supported by an uncle. I think that the child should be treated, she is innocent and I'm really saddened by the number of people posting comments by this article saying they agree with the NHS stance on this.

What do you think?

What it has clearly illustrated is that you are making assumptions about who in this thread claims 'benefits' and are smugly patting yourself on the back.
I want to protect the vulnerable in our society. The last 3 words of that sentence are the ones that are in dispute here. I will happily donate to people outside our society, as will many people arguing against changing NHS eligibility criteria. Why are you not seeing that? It's like a block.

Mat read you write long irascibke posts with no intellectual content
You throw accusations at unnamed posters but don't answer direct questions put
You recommend need to limit sone services eg ivf but advocate free access to health for all who need it...but ivf is healthcare,people will passionately say they need it

.can you see how contradictory you are. You're all over the shop

"Complete takers with no decency towards other vulnerable people, especially innocent children."

[my emphasis]

:o

So it's OK to lack decency towards vulnerable people if you are not vulnerable yourself?

It's fine for you, with your private healthcare, to advocate reducing entitlement to healthcare.

But it's not OK for people who rely on the NHS to protect it from claims it can't afford and was never intended to meet?

You hypocrite!

Flatbread you want free access to healthcare for all, but want to reduce ivf provision
You're all over the shop
Shadowboxing and generally a bit accusatory to unnamed many

I haven't read the whole thread.

As I expect that I will find some views quite upsetting, so rather avoid them.

I feel actually very strong about this. I think that the girl should be treated and that afterwards the NHS should attempt to recoup the costs if there is any realistic chance of recouping the full or only a part of the costs (otherwise it is just a waste of resources to try to get the money back).

Treating this little girl does IMO not risk opening the floodgates to lots of illegal immigrant children coming to the UK for treatment for hugely expensive ailments. The UK is a great place, but it is not the only place on earth where people may go.

In the Netherlands (yes, one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the Western world and generally regarded as one of the best, or even the best), children of illegal immigrants have the right to healthcare, not just necessary treatment but treatment needed from a medical point of view (it is enshrined in Law that providers refusing necessary treatment can even face up to four years prison), right to education (until they become 18) and the right of legal representation.

Expensive, maybe. Others will have to pick up the tab, yes. Sign of a civilised society, yes and I am proud of that.

I don't think that children should suffer if there is any realistic chance to avoid it due to the actions of their parents.

I hope that somebody reads about this little girl's plight and will be willing to (part) fund her treatment. I expect that the parents are too scared to actively fund raise in order to get her the necessary treatment .

No,as sad as this is it isnt about one wee girl.it's the precedent it sets
You have to have eligibility criteria to manage scarce resources that are in high demand
We struggling to meet statutory demands without accommodating other new demands,and thats the reality. All the handwringing and poor we girl is sentimental without addressing who pays!if pay fir this op is it a stand alone act or does nhs pay for all treatments demanded

dikkertjedap - there is no prospect of reclaiming these funds. The parents have no legal standing here. They can't work.

Of course you can have access to healthcare for all, but limited provisioning without discrimination.

That would mean we all pay for some services, while others are free to everyone in our society. Irrespective of nationality, criminal record, whether they work or not. As long as you live in our country, we have a social pact to take care of each other, especially children, through our public services.

We can be tougher on immigration, to limit people coming through, if we feel we can't support more.

And if we cannot afford it, we all cut-back and pay more, so that services are available to everyone in our society. That is just basic decency. Otherwise we deny illegal immigrants now, tomorrow it will be benefit seekers, the day after it will be another group.

I cannot fathom how you can think a child, who might live next door to you, should suffer needlessly and be denied healthcare that your children get courtesy all of us.

Athinginyourlife, I have private healthcare and have happily contributed to NHS in the past. No longer. This thread has opened my eyes to the extreme pettiness and selfishness of people who take from the rest of us, but advocate denying care to a sick, vulnerable, innocent child living in our community.

Anyone aghast can of course donate or set up a just giving page
The Bangladeshi community could set up a fund?£1 from each adult expat
The nhs cannot recoup the costs,but people could fundraise to pay trust costs

Dikkert, good to see your post.

Glad that the Netherlands has a humane approach to this.

But I think all the people on benefits and users/abuses of our welfare state and NHS will strenuously argue that we should neglect this child. Because they want to jealously guard the resources so they can take as much as possible.

For the millionth and final time
We all want her treated. We are arguing about who should pay. Your constant claims that we want her neglected and disabled are starting to make you sound fairly dim. Read the words people are recording on the thread.

SPB - it just doesn't seem so. If it were the case, why then not have her treated now and see what options there are to recoup the costs afterwards. That approach I can reconcile with people wanting her treated. An approach were the parents have to cough up the money first (which they clearly don't have) I cannot reconcile with people wanting her treatment. Just empty words and people possibly trying to justify their lack of morality.

Put a tax on bankers' bonused, that may help to fund healthcare for children from illegal immigrants.

sorry, should say additional tax on bankers' bonuses.

"But I think all the people on benefits and users/abuses of our welfare state and NHS will strenuously argue that we should neglect this child. Because they want to jealously guard the resources so they can take as much as possible."

People are more likely to care about and want to protect a system the have a stake in.

That was built into the welfare state from the start.

But what is really objectionable is someone who doesn't need the welfare state trying to justify dismantling it because the oiks aren't grateful enough.

if people (the public) want her treated, they will pay
The NHS (or more likely a private hospital) will want payment as they always do.
If you offer to buy food for someone who has fallen on hard times, you don't expect tesco to give them it then ask for payment a few weeks later.
Do you feel BUPA should treat this child? If not, why not? Why the NHS? Neither organisation receives specific funds to treat children who are ineligible for NHS treatment. Why is the NHS the baddie?

Don't disagree with your comment about banker bonuses BTW. And can I throw in a few MPs and their duck houses?

NHS providers get paid by the way. By NHS commissioners. They don't do work free of charge - they bill (for most acute work, some is still managed separately)

Sorry my first 2 setences are true as of now. Give it a few days and watch the NHS disintegrate before your very eyes.

I still cannot understand why the family of this child, or why the UKs Bangladeshi community havent thought to fundraise for this operation themselves? Why haven't they rallied round when one of their own needs them - like we all did for Aillidh, and like my co-workers did to help Oliver walk.

This family would have been aware 3 months ago that they were unlikely to receive this operation 'for free' on the NHS. At that point they should have started fundraising. They could have used the kind of publicity they are currently receiving to push their cause. Instead of being proactive and actually trying to help their daughter they thought it was more important to engage the services of a solicitor - NOT one that specialises in Immigration Law, but one whose website shows compensation claim success.

the whole thing is leaving a very nasty taste in my mouth.

I also read that the second expert the family got to assess their daughter was from Bangladesh - so they have contacts over their able to so this, but not to give their daughter the treatment they say she desperately needs? It doesn't add up.

According to Government figures, Bangladesh receives around £250 million a year from Britain's £8 billion annual aid budget. Heres an idea - if the family wont pay, why not take the money for the operation out of that? Of course it may mean that more seriously ill children in Bangladesh die...

I've paid in to the NHS for nearly 30 years now. I haven't used the service for 24 years, neither has my husband. Even my DD was born overseas. If I could I would have happily given every last penny of my NI contributions to Expat, or to Trazzle if it would keep their children alive, or even to Oliver to enable him to walk.

If this young girl needed a life saving operation I may feel differently, but right now I do not think that her needs are greater than those being turned down for life saving cancer treatment - that £10,000 is needed elsewhere and the family are well able to fundraiser themselves - they just need to get off their backsides and do it.

I don't think cases like these will make the NHS disintegrate.

Hasn't happened with the Dutch system anyway and they have implemented this policy many many years ago. It has repeatedly been challenged in the courts (also in the Netherlands there are plenty of people who think that children from immigrants should not have the same rights as other children), each time the courts ruled that children need to have full access, not just in case of life saving treatment, but any treatment necessary from a medical perspective.

I have no problem with paying a higher, than otherwise may have been, health insurance premium, if this was triggering it. I think it has to do with wanting to act in a moral way. I would like to see a child, any child for that matter, in a humane way. What is happening to this child is morally wrong in my experience. Not just the actions of the parents, but also those of the NHS. This makes me sad.

LtEve - thats on of the best posts on this thread

sorry, my typing is definitely not up to scratch, should say children from illegal immigrants ...

The NHS has a legal duty to establish entitlement. That's been done in this case and the result means that the hospital cannot proceed without funding.

The same applies to all treatment for eligible people too. A certain level of service is agreed for each year. If the soon to be abolished PCTs deny to fund a particular surgery or drug and the hospital does it anyway then it's a black hole in their finances.

I think there are two different issues regarding rationing health care, within our society (I am not talking of people living in sub-Saharan Africa, but people within our communities)

One is about what level of treatment should be covered. This is decided by NICE and it applies to all. If we won't provide controversial/expensive drugs to A, we won't provide them to B or anyone else. This is not discriminatory, it is applicable to everyone. Btw, this is done everywhere, even in private insurance, and is based on cost-effectiveness clinical metrics and evidence

The second type of rationing is about discrimination. It says that X members living in our communities will get healthcare coverage, but not Y. And therein we go down a slippery slope. In 1981, a sick child like this baby girl, would have been treated by NHS, but not now. In the near future, we might pass a law saying that people who are on benefits can only get limited access to care, or only for the first two children, because, you know, resources are not unlimited. And the after, we will further restrict it to people who pay in only getting any access to care, because we lost all compassion for others and judge them unworthy and parasites.

The minute you give up the moral argument that all the vulnerable living within our communities should be cared for, you start by eroding benefits for everyone. Whether you realise it or not, your pointing fingers at this child will one day mean that people will find probably find you unworthy of care and your children a drain on our system. And then pass a rule to that effect

For a welfare state to be sustained, we have to protect the rights of the most vulnerable, not exclude them. Because once we exclude some people within our society, anyone else can be excluded too, based on the political hot-button of the day.

That is why it is better to ration care for everyone. Have everyone pay a bit for care, if need be, rather than be greedy and just want all the possible freebies for only some groups. Because there is no moral justification for that.

Agree with what flatbread just posted.

Nobody is denying that resources are limited. They are, everywhere. It is how you decide on access to these scarce resources and whether you choose to do so in a discriminatory or non-discriminatory way.

In the Netherlands, this girl would be treated. It simply is irrelevant whether she is illegal or not, because all children who would need this specific treatment would get it. Also, like all other children in the Netherlands, she would have access to the immunisation program, regular check ups, etc., in addition, the education system until she is 18 and the judicial system for assistance if necessary.

This doesn't mean that the Dutch healthcare system pays for every possible treatment for every possible disease. Like NICE in the UK, it is centrally decided which treatments get funded and which don't. But, these decisions then apply to all children in the Netherlands, whatever their status is.

If parents nevertheless want access to a treatment not covered by Dutch health insurance, they would need to find a provider (almost certainly abroad) and pay themselves possibly selling their house (has happened) or fundraising etc. The Dutch insurance system also enables people to take out higher level insurance (more expensive than basic insurance), but this insurance will just cover extras like physiotherapy in more circumstances, dental care, own private room in hospital, etc. It will still not cover any treatments not approved by the central body. So there is no big difference between people who take out the basic level of insurance or the top level of insurance.

Although the Dutch system is very expensive, I am pleased we have it and not have these in my view inhumane outcomes like in the UK. I find it truly shocking that people on this thread genuinely think that some children in Britain are deserving care and other children also living in Britain are not deserving this through no fault of their own. This is pure discrimination.

Shame on you.