At long last the Government is making a serious effort to combat “health tourism” – that nasty, cynical disease where non-UK taxpayers visit the UK specifically to use its state-funded National Health Service for free treatment.
There is strong public support for tackling this abuse. A poll for Ipsos Mori found that 74% of respondents support increasing charges for visitors from outside the UK to help fund the NHS. The difficulty has been getting the money. The great majority disappear from NHS hospitals and never pay up.
But a change in the rules, from April onwards, will require all hospitals to check whether patients are eligible for free NHS treatment and to charge in advance those who aren’t – provided the matter is not urgent.
The Government hopes to recover £500 million a year in this way. The BMA has attacked the plan, claiming it won’t work. Given the extent of far left infiltration by the BMA, it will doubtless be hoping that is the case.
However Stephen Graves, Chief Executive Officer at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has already piloted upfront charging for elective care and says: “Since implementing our policy, we have seen an improvement in our hospitals. The funds recouped are invested back into the system to benefit patients and our approach has not been to the detriment of the high quality patient care and patient experience we are able to provide. There has not been any impact on
the number of non-UK residents coming through the system for treatment but we do now identify non-eligible patients sooner, and at a higher volume than previously.”
Certainly at some places the pressure is worse than others. The maternity unit at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London was used by around 900 pregnant health tourists in 2015. It cost the taxpayer over £4 million in unpaid bills. About a fifth of all births at the hospital were from mothers visiting from outside the EU. No
wonder people talk of the NHS becoming the International Health Service.
A routine birth costs the NHS about £5,000 – when there is a Caesarean section the cost rises sharply. You can see why an air fare to London is regarded as good value for pregnant women.
Of course, all this is before we get started on the EU health tourism – which is perfectly legal until Brexit has been completed. Those from other EU countries
arriving in the UK looking for work don’t have a European Health Insurance Card until after they get a job. But once they start work here they have a UK EHIC, valid for five years. They can use that card for emergency health care anywhere in the EU – including their home country. The upshot is that the UK pays £750 million to other EU countries to cover costs of UK EHIC card-holders having treatment
abroad, but only gets £40 million back.
Some claim half a billion is a small amount given that the NHS budget is £121 billion this year. But this is an astonishingly casual attitude to an abuse of taxpayers’ money. The same people who claim the NHS is desperately short of money show lofty disdain when given the chance to collect some of the stuff.
In any case, rigorous management would probably find greater savings. It is not just the invoices that are left unpaid but the health tourism that is undetected and thus the invoices never issued in the first place.
It is true that many of those who come to use the NHS come from countries where the health system is deficient. But spending a huge sum on those who abuse our hospitality is hardly the most effective way for us to exercise charity to those suffering from substandard care in their own countries.
So this clampdown is welcome. Frankly, however, it should have come years ago. Let us hope that it will herald the more rigorous approach that a properly managed health system desperately needs.
