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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @06:30PM
None of what you wrote is a rebuttal to the fact that even illegal immigrants are part of society and their illness is our illness. Herd immunity requires everyone, regardless of legal status, to be vaccinated.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 25 2016, @07:06PM
Illegals bring in all kinds of exciting exotic diseases which would otherwise not be there -- like whooping cough, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Leprosy, Dengue Fever, to name a few!
You sound like one of those liberal White girls with an upper middle-class upbringing who graduates from Womens' Studies and goes to Haiti to sleep with the natives.
Your herpes is everybody's herpes!
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday November 25 2016, @07:40PM
Nigel Farage said that foreigners bring AIDS into the country, and in doing so put a burden on the NHS. He said this during the Brexit referendum campaign.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @08:49PM
> Illegals bring in all kinds of exciting exotic diseases which would otherwise not be there
As if no tourist has ever brought an infection with them into the country.
But regardless of how the disease got there, refusing to treat it only makes it spread.
> You sound like one of those liberal White girls
MD actually. You, on the other hand, sound like a right cunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @11:38PM
Drug resistant bacteria would exist regardless of immigration.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:15AM
Being an asshole would exist regardless of altruism. Let's not only tolerate it, but accept it into society!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @03:50AM
You are still allowed to post, so looks like we are accepting assholes into our society.