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NHS Patients Could be Forced to Show Passports in Crackdown on Foreign Users

posted by martyb on Friday November 25 2016, @01:49PM   
from the make-foreigners-pay dept.

n1 writes:

Patients could be forced to show their passports before being granted NHS [UK's National Health Service] care as part of a bid to crack down on foreign visitors, a senior official has said.

The Department of Health is examining whether patients should have to show two forms of ID to get some elements of NHS care, saying this was "controversial" but already happening in some places.

Chris Wormald, the most senior civil servant at the Department of Health, said in a hearing at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the NHS has a "lot further to go" when it comes to reclaiming money from foreign visitors.

[...] "Now it is obviously quite a controversial thing to do to say to the entire population you now have to prove identity."

[...] But PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier expressed concern about British residents that don't have photo ID and those who would struggle to find a utility bill.

"I have constituents who have no photo IDs," she said.

"Because they have never travelled they have no passport, they have no driver's licence because they have never driven, they still live at home because they can't afford to move out so they've never had a utility bill in their name.

"(They are) perfectly entitled to health care - British born, British resident - how are you going to make sure that people have access easily to the National Health Service without having to go through a very humiliating and impossible to meet set of demands?"

Source: The Independent

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Original Submission

• I found it! I found it! (Score: 5, Informative) by fritsd on Friday November 25 2016, @06:01PM

  by fritsd (4586) on Friday November 25 2016, @06:01PM (#432923) Journal

  I vaguely remembered reading about this.

  Now I found a relevant article from BBC News from 2013:

  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-24616801 [bbc.com]

  "The UK has reciprocal agreements with most European nations and 28 other countries, and under these visitors are given free NHS care.

  The NHS should claim these costs back from the relevant governments - but the research suggests just £73m a year is recouped out of more than £460m at present.

  This is because there is a perverse incentive in the system whereby if they declare the fact they have treated a foreign national it is up to the individual hospital to chase up the home nation for the money whereas if they do not declare it they get money from the NHS system for seeing a patient entitled to care."

  So it's the UK politics' own fault that this money is not recouped.

  If the government would construct a small "Office of Recovering Foreign Sicko's Money" and staff it with a few dozen trained telephone operators and access to the health databases,
  they could change the policy easily to: "just order the hospitals to send the bills for foreigners to the O.R.F.S.M. with a yellow sticky note with as much as possible details on country of residence, name, foreign health insurer, and passport number".

  That would apparently save (£ 387 million * (percentage ORFSM efficiently reclaimed) - ORFSM operating costs).
  If 25% of foreigners would respond truthfully, the NHS would save (96 - approx 2) = ₤ 94 million per annum.

  In less than 138 years, it could pay for the UK's part in the Joint Strike Fighter programme!

  Most people are probably honest, so it would more likely be double the revenue.

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:I found it! (Score: 2) by turgid on Friday November 25 2016, @06:39PM

  by turgid (4318) on Friday November 25 2016, @06:39PM (#432952) Journal

  Stop talking sense on the Intertubes.

  --
  I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].

  Parent