National Health Service Or International Health Service?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3683605/Health-tourists-jump-NHS-queue-Foreign-patients-given-eye-surgery-Britons-wait-months.html

Nigel Farage once mentioned this type of thing and was lambasted for it, but how much longer is it going to continue to take place?

[retrocop]

EDDIE51
I know exactly how the USA get their debts repaid in certain cases.
A colleague of mine had a daughter who worked for American Airlines at the Fast-Track Check-in desk at Victoria Station, London. After many exams with a large drop out/failure rate his daughter 'won her wings'.
The daughters parents, siblings and grandparents were invited to Ft Worth compliments of AA for the graduation ceremony.
My colleague,who appointed himself party leader,foolishly neglected knowingly to get travel/medical insurance for the party. His parent were in their mid 80s.
Result was Elderly father had a coronary at Disney World/Land during the extended break they took.
My colleague had to fly home and re mortgage his house to go back and pay the bill. That is fact. Father did survive. :-)

[EDDIE51]

^^ OK but what would have happened if the colleague simply had no house to remorgage and no possible way to raise the cash? That was the point I was trying to get across, what happens to those who have no possible way to pay?

[retrocop]

They end up in the sluice room washing bed pans probably!!

[retrocop]

Do the Americans allow vagrants to enter through their visa system? I am sure the U.S. government would persuade the UK government to rescue their cash strapped subjects and the debt is transferred to the UK by the returning patient. The US would probably, ban for life, entry to the states again.

[EDDIE51]

Yes I realise that. So if they had a situation where the person had no means to pay and their home nation refused to have anything to do with them what happens?

[retrocop]

They shoot them!!! We could go on what iffing forever at this rate!

[Gladeian]

Compulsory medical insurance before entry allowed for all non EU (at the moment) people.

[EDDIE51]

^^ Still will not work!
They turn up at Heathrow in a state where emergency medical treatment is needed either to save life or to prevent serious harm. In that situation you can not refuse entry and they know it.!

[EDDIE51]

Ambulances being sent to Heathrow airside, and to a lesser extent Gatwick to meet people direct off the planes for transport to hospital for emergency treatment happens several times a day. They don't even have to go through immigration if a medical emergency has been declared.

[jourdain2]

I can only repeat our experience in France. S-I-L arrived to help us move, helped load washing-machine, went grey - heart! Air ambulance, investigatory op., hospitalisation etc.. (He's absolutely fine b.t.w.) First thing he was asked when ambulance rushed him into hospital was 'Where is your insurance?' - before being admitted! He had taken it out, so no problem.

I suspect that his passport would have been impounded if he had had no insurance and not returned until treatment was paid for. They are not daft and do not mess about.

[Peter Pedant]

// If the 13 Trusts gave no information, how can the figure of 84% be arrived at?//

it is an estimate Gromit and figures have been carried over.
so almost anything is 'true' on the day

[ by comparison the estimate that only 25% of under 25s had voted in the referendum so it was their own bloody fault if we voted 'out'
has now been revised up to 67% ( todays times )
and the 25% was an estimate based on voting in the last general election !! ]

[retrocop]

EDDIE51
Tell me please how many ambulances at LGW and LHR are NHS ambulances and not Private ambulances which shuttle through airside. Very few NHS I would venture. More likely medic insurance case vacs for moronic Brit youth jumping off Hotel balconies,tombstoning or skiing accidents.

[237SJ]

"Ambulances being sent to Heathrow airside....happens several times a day". No it doesn't.
"They don't even have to go through Immigration if a medical amergency has been declared" Yes, they do. Where do you get this stuff, do you make it up? Retrocop, they are NHS (London Ambulance Service) and most of them get carted off to Hillingdon Hospital

[EDDIE51]

They still go through immigration but at the hospital after treatment. Immigration officials are sent to collect the information.

[237SJ]

No Eddie. Border Control come down to the aircraft side when someone is taken off by the ambulance and clear them for entry into the UK.

[Hypognosis]

@AOG & Gromit

//The Mail article also seems very confusing. These sentences seem contradictory or misleading //

It escaped both of you that Gromits "contradictions" were two unrelated strands of research

i) The Daily Mail, quizzing hospitals, with only x% responding a certain way
ii) Government-conducted research and statistics on payment recovery (or not)

[Hypognosis]

It would be an interesting statistical exercise to compare the figures for taxes paid by "contributing to this country" migrant workers with the unpaid medical bills of their short-stay compatriots.

Maybe they don't mind helping out their less fortunate former fellow countrymen/women?

(I had an idea to post but douglas got there first, re billing the airlines for ferrying patients here without prior authorisation, through proper diplomatic channels).

At the very minimum, I would like to see health tourism treated as serious breaches of diplomatic protocol and the worst abuser country named and shamed at least once a year, to the extent that even the BBC news spends a couple of minutes on the subject.

[237SJ]

Hypo - how would you propose that airlines are billed for "ferrying people here without prior authorisation" Maybe there should be a resident doctor in each airport who gives everyone the once over before they get on the plane?

[Hypognosis]

@237SJ


// Hypo - how would you propose that airlines are billed for "ferrying people here without prior authorisation" //

Simply invoicing them. They already pay juristictions they fly through for ATC services, plus landing fees, gate fees, valeting fees to the airport (and its cleaning/catering contractors).

The state could invoice the airport owners for services rendered and they will be unflinching in squeezing the sending airlines to recoup that.

// Maybe there should be a resident doctor in each airport who gives everyone the once over before they get on the plane? //

Fine them often enough to make it worth their while and the sending airlines will hire their own, to vet passengers before departure. Would be interesting to see if they gamble their 7 years' worth of expensive training on colluding with freeloaders just on the basis of shared nationality.

The message has to transmit back to these countries and a mere poster campaign (there) would only last as it long as it took disgruntled passers-by to rip them off the wall while still wet.

Oh the British Empire means we owe them freebies in perpetuity? If only we could extinguish that idea without actually causing deaths of people in those countries from preventable - but locally expensive - diseases.

Sigh!

[Khandro]

6 month on from this topic and little has happened - except perhaps the NHS needs even more funding. Today's Spectator;
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/if-the-nhs-needs-more-money-why-not-collect-from-health-tourists/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170128_Weekly_Highlights_04_SUBS