Hello ladies.
I can't believe that health tourism is a massive problem when only 0.01 per cent of NHS funding is spent on treating people who don't pay UK taxes. Plus if a visitor became ill or had an accident their health care costs would be recoverable from their home country and infact the NHS employs people to do just that.
What will happen after Brexit is a worry though. Will it be more difficult to recover costs from European countries and what about us if we fall ill abroad? That little health insurance card we take on holiday may not count for much. My other concern is how we'll cope without the staff from overseas, there are already huge shortages of nurses and doctors so we clearly have insufficient British people to fill the vacancies, what happens if all the foreigners decide to leave ? My friend the retired GP talks about this a lot and she has a doctor son and a nurse daughter. When I saw her the other day she told me that staff shortages are so bad at a London hospital that her daughter plans to either leave the profession or go and work in Australia!
Sorry to be so negative ladies but as we know health care is vital to us all and I hate to see our precious system fall apart.
Wishing everyone well.
K.
So Kathleen, you dont think £2 billion a year is a massive problem? There have been countless reports and TV progs about this and it IS a massive problem.
I watched a prog last year where they highlighted cases where people had come to this country knowing full well they were very ill, then went to hospitals here and received free treatment. There was a man from Egypt who got heart surgery and his daughter was on camera saying they would pay the bill and the update at the end said they never did. That was about £250,000. There was a woman from the Phillipines who did likewise and never paid a penny and then there was the Nigerian woman who came here heavily pregnant with quads and that was a similar amount. Her husband in Nigeria was wealthy and they never paid a penny either.
It just annoys me that we are such a soft touch. You just would NOT get treated in any other country without paying or having full insurance to cover it. My friends Mum went to Canada on holiday and within days had gallstone problems. At the hospital they refused to do anything unless she provided evidence of her insurance. The daughter in England had to email them through and only then would they operate.