News1 min ago
How much longer are we to tolerate these foreign abusersd of our NHS?
66 Answers
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Why do we allow foreign nationals to come over to the UK and receive the very best of treatment all at our expense?
If you took your car to a garage for repairs, does anyone believe that they would allow it to be driven away without one first paying for the cost of repairs?
Why do we allow foreign nationals to come over to the UK and receive the very best of treatment all at our expense?
If you took your car to a garage for repairs, does anyone believe that they would allow it to be driven away without one first paying for the cost of repairs?
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does no one think of the hypocrisy of viewing people this way, chavs, spongers, so many labels, yet castigate any one who dares mention Islam, or black people in what is perceived as a negative light. Happy to cast aspersions on single mothers, without knowing the first thing about their lives. I honestly don't know what a chav is.
£10,000? That is nothing! A few years ago it was reported in the Burngreave, (a suburb of Sheffield), Messenger that a failed asylum seeker from Pakistan, had fallen and damaged his back, whilst working. He was taken to the Northern General hospital where the operations needed cost the NHS £95,000. Since he obviously couldn't pay for his treatment, a huge petition from the Muslim community in the surrounding areas made sure that he never paid a penny and the cost was footed by the NHS.
At the time there was a case on the go of a man who was being denied cancer treatment because it cost too much at £15,000 per year. He lived in the wrong postcode area, apparently.
My question is, whose country is this?
At the time there was a case on the go of a man who was being denied cancer treatment because it cost too much at £15,000 per year. He lived in the wrong postcode area, apparently.
My question is, whose country is this?
The trouble is, the NHS is duty bound to provide `emergency care`. Before I even read this link I knew it would be regarding someone from Nigeria. It`s no coincidence that more babies are born on flights from West Africa than from anywhere else. The mothers are desperately trying to get to the Uk to have their kids. They can easily get forged certificates to say they can fly beyond the safe limits. I dread to think how much Hillingdon Hospital has had to fork out over the years.
I suppose an added advantage of course is that if the woman manages to give birth in the UK, then the resulting child/children will be able to claim UK citizenship. I remember (several years ago) when a pregnant lady from W Africa was trying to get to the Uk to have the baby and her situation was so critical that the aircraft diverted to France. To say she was disappointed would be an understatement.
Who is responsible for allowing this to happen all the time? Hundreds of foreigners come here for treatment and leave without paying. We are being taken for mugs. You would think by now the successive Governments would have found the means to plug the gaps for all the fraudulent practices that are going on.
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As the Department of Health makes clear, anyone who is “ordinarily resident” in the UK is eligible for free NHS treatment. However when it comes to overseas patients, the situation is more complicated.
The cost of care for EU-nationals (as well as those living in Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein) is covered by European regulations (883/2004 and 987/2009) which allows the UK to recover the money from the country concerned. The UK also has bilateral agreements with many other nations to enable similar arrangements.
However patients travelling from countries not covered are not eligible for free treatment, and should be charged for any care they receive.
While in theory therefore the taxpayer should not be liable for the costs incurred by treating foreign patients, the reality is somewhat different. This is because while the NHS is bound by its constitution to attempt the recovery of money owed by visiting patients, it is not always possible or economical to do so.
When asked in the House of Commons for the sums lost in this way in March, Health Minister Anne Milton revealed that it had cost the public purse just shy of £7 million in 2009-10, some way short of Mr Littlejohn's estimate.
Where then does the £200 million figure come from, and what can explain such a wide divergence in the estimates?
After doing some digging, Full Fact found that the £200 million figure had been cropping up in discussions of health tourism for many years. We were able to trace its provenance back to an estimate made in 2003 by debt collection agency CCI Legal Services, which works with the NHS to recover payments owed.
As media reports made clear at the time, CCI had actually estimated that the costs could be anywhere between £50 million and £200 million (in choosing to report the higher figure, Mr Littlejohn is of course not alone).
The estimate is several times larger than the sums reported by Ms Milton because the Government's figure only considers recognised debts that have been written off, whereas CCI attempted to account for overseas patients that go undetected by the health service, and therefore claim free care for which they were not eligible.
We got in touch with CCI in order to try to put the £200 million figure into some kind of context, and while a spokesperson told us that the firm no longer held copies of the 2003 research, they were able to give us a bit more detail to the estimate.
Most significantly, the spokesperson told us that while they thought the likely costs incurred by overseas patients were still “significant”, they were likely to have fallen since the 2003 estimate was made, as there had been “greater awareness of the issue and greater effort to tackle it.”
The Department of Health has confirmed that it does not currently hold an official estimate of the cost of 'health tourism' although it has suggested that proposed reforms to overseas treatment should provide more information and clarity on the issue.
Conculsion
Therefore, while Richard Littlejohn isn't wrong to claim that it has been “said” that the costs may be as high as £200 million, we need to treat this figure with a good deal of caution: at best it is the upper bound of an eight year old estimate, at worst it is something of a stab in the dark.
The cost of care for EU-nationals (as well as those living in Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein) is covered by European regulations (883/2004 and 987/2009) which allows the UK to recover the money from the country concerned. The UK also has bilateral agreements with many other nations to enable similar arrangements.
However patients travelling from countries not covered are not eligible for free treatment, and should be charged for any care they receive.
While in theory therefore the taxpayer should not be liable for the costs incurred by treating foreign patients, the reality is somewhat different. This is because while the NHS is bound by its constitution to attempt the recovery of money owed by visiting patients, it is not always possible or economical to do so.
When asked in the House of Commons for the sums lost in this way in March, Health Minister Anne Milton revealed that it had cost the public purse just shy of £7 million in 2009-10, some way short of Mr Littlejohn's estimate.
Where then does the £200 million figure come from, and what can explain such a wide divergence in the estimates?
After doing some digging, Full Fact found that the £200 million figure had been cropping up in discussions of health tourism for many years. We were able to trace its provenance back to an estimate made in 2003 by debt collection agency CCI Legal Services, which works with the NHS to recover payments owed.
As media reports made clear at the time, CCI had actually estimated that the costs could be anywhere between £50 million and £200 million (in choosing to report the higher figure, Mr Littlejohn is of course not alone).
The estimate is several times larger than the sums reported by Ms Milton because the Government's figure only considers recognised debts that have been written off, whereas CCI attempted to account for overseas patients that go undetected by the health service, and therefore claim free care for which they were not eligible.
We got in touch with CCI in order to try to put the £200 million figure into some kind of context, and while a spokesperson told us that the firm no longer held copies of the 2003 research, they were able to give us a bit more detail to the estimate.
Most significantly, the spokesperson told us that while they thought the likely costs incurred by overseas patients were still “significant”, they were likely to have fallen since the 2003 estimate was made, as there had been “greater awareness of the issue and greater effort to tackle it.”
The Department of Health has confirmed that it does not currently hold an official estimate of the cost of 'health tourism' although it has suggested that proposed reforms to overseas treatment should provide more information and clarity on the issue.
Conculsion
Therefore, while Richard Littlejohn isn't wrong to claim that it has been “said” that the costs may be as high as £200 million, we need to treat this figure with a good deal of caution: at best it is the upper bound of an eight year old estimate, at worst it is something of a stab in the dark.
em10
/// who are these chavettes you keep on about. ///
It is the common practice that some use on here em10, they will blame anything and anyone to take the attention off the real culprit in question especially if they happen to posses a darker skin.
Hence Duncer's further remark,
/// Why would you mention black people in a negative light? ///
Is it not at all possible that some black people are just as prone to be judged in a 'negative light' as are some whites?
/// who are these chavettes you keep on about. ///
It is the common practice that some use on here em10, they will blame anything and anyone to take the attention off the real culprit in question especially if they happen to posses a darker skin.
Hence Duncer's further remark,
/// Why would you mention black people in a negative light? ///
Is it not at all possible that some black people are just as prone to be judged in a 'negative light' as are some whites?
-- answer removed --
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