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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: 2) by Webweasel on Friday November 25 2016, @10:28PM
3 - People determined to abuse the system will find a way round it anyway. This leads to an escalating arms-race of byzantine methods of screening vs illegal workarounds to the point where legitimate users can't access the system at all. For an example, try claiming working tax credit or disability benefit, I dare you. You'll be gouging your eyes out with a biro within a fortnight.
Beyond true. About 8 years ago I was in the child tax credits scheme. I'm a single dad with 2 kids and back then their child care was paid by the state. Until the day I got a letter saying I didn't have any kids and I owed the gov £25k in child tax credits.
The "system" could not deal with a complaint about this. I could only post an appeal to be reviewed in 3 months, all of the time not having £1500 a month to pay for child care, that I would normally get (praise be to some of the things the Blair gov did).
I had to use my "skillz" to track down the home phone number of the director of the tax credits system and talk to his wife to get the situation sorted.
One hell of a week that was.
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