NHS getting worse at clawing back cash for foreigners’ care

[NicD]

We have got the country some people people think we deserve:

'NHS hospitals are getting even worse at clawing back money for foreigners’ healthcare, despite ministers’ pledges to stamp out health tourism.
A £600million ‘health tourism gap’ sees the UK paying out £20 for the healthcare costs of Britons who fall ill on the continent for every £1 it gets back for the NHS treatment of European visitors.
The disparity is even worse than it was two years ago, when Britain paid out £16 for every £1 it got back.
It means that, despite promises from David Cameron and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to get to grips with the issue, the gulf is widening year on year.
The figures, released following a Freedom of Information request, show that in 2012/13, British taxpayers handed £649.3million to European governments to pay for the care of UK citizens who fall ill abroad.
But the NHS managed to collect only £32million from the same European countries to pay for the care of their citizens who needed treatment here.
Ministers claim ‘health tourism’ costs British taxpayers billions a year, as many NHS trusts do not even keep records of debts.
Last year cancer specialist Professor J Meirion Thomas warned of a ‘massive and escalating problem’ of foreigners travelling to Britain for cancer, HIV, kidney and infertility treatment then leaving without paying.
He said the NHS was also becoming the ‘world’s maternity wing’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611771/NH...

[NicD]

blindswelledrat said:

And shock, PH laps up every word of it like the hungry frightened tabloid sluts that they are,


THis is the reason for the disparity, not heathcare tourism.

Edited by blindswelledrat on Friday 20th March 14:48

its easy to ignore your nasty, course and information devoid post so I will.

If you have any facts, produce them.

For others reading this, you will find that UK pensioners (actually all of us) abroad in the EU will get non emergency treatment only on production of their EHIC, or if they pay for it.
It is not too hard for European healthcare professionals to collect payment, so why so hard here?

[NicD]

blindswelledrat said:

And yet the nasty, course and information devoid article from the Daily Mail you accept as gospel, with no facts or figures required, and try to stir up anger.
Interesting double standards.

I made no comment on the article, only on your rant.

You cant even say why you characterise the article this way.

YOU need to produce facts if you dispute something.

[NicD]

blindswelledrat said:

fido said:

But that's the point BSR - it's easy to collect money from UK retirees (i.e. comparatively wealthy people with savings) who go to Spain whereas people from the EU don't generally come here to retire. How do France and Germany deal with these issues?

I don't get you? You seem to be making my point. Our elderly retire in SPain and as a result use hugely disproportionate amount of Spain's healthcare (230 million in 2013 to be precise). Almost zero Spanish choose to retire in England and as a result don't use our healthcare very much (or 5.5 million in 2013 to be precise).
Absolutely nothing there demonstrates that there is disproportionate claiming back. You need more figures to know whether that's true or not because that disparity could easily be simply down to realistic use rather than the implied health tourism.

what don't you get?

Our elderly retire in Spain, get treatment for which the Spanish bill the UK. So we taxpayers pay (as we should.) Its probably beneficial to the Spanish economy

Freeloaders come over here, get treatment and if its not recharged, guess what, we pay.

Spot the difference?