Health tourists are people who visit the country perfectly legally. They come into Britain, usually on a visitor visa, with a pre-existing illness and their arrival in hospital is premeditated: the very purpose of their visit is to access free NHS care.
Nor do they come with trivial problems. It is specialist, expensive and resource-intensive treatments that they are after. The most common examples include complex pregnancies, cancer, HIV and renal dialysis.
NHS hospitals have overseas visitor officers whose job it is to identify and charge patients who are not eligible for free care.
And Jeremy Hunt has based his figure of £200‰million on the invoices which these officers have sent to patients who have been treated by the NHS.
But the fact is that most health tourists are either invisible to the overseas visitor officers or use loopholes in the regulations to get round them.
Which means that, in the vast majority of cases, no charge is made and no invoice is sent out. This means that the cost of their treatment does not appear in Hunt's £200‰million figure.
Read more: No other country lets foreigners exploit its health system the way we do. Health tourism is threatening to bankrupt the NHS | Mail Online
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Health Tourism of the UK
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Health Tourism of the UK
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
Health Tourism of the UK
oscar;1429911 wrote: Health tourists are people who visit the country perfectly legally. They come into Britain, usually on a visitor visa, with a pre-existing illness and their arrival in hospital is premeditated: the very purpose of their visit is to access free NHS care.
Nor do they come with trivial problems. It is specialist, expensive and resource-intensive treatments that they are after. The most common examples include complex pregnancies, cancer, HIV and renal dialysis.
NHS hospitals have overseas visitor officers whose job it is to identify and charge patients who are not eligible for free care.
And Jeremy Hunt has based his figure of £200‰million on the invoices which these officers have sent to patients who have been treated by the NHS.
But the fact is that most health tourists are either invisible to the overseas visitor officers or use loopholes in the regulations to get round them.
Which means that, in the vast majority of cases, no charge is made and no invoice is sent out. This means that the cost of their treatment does not appear in Hunt's £200‰million figure.
Read more: No other country lets foreigners exploit its health system the way we do. Health tourism is threatening to bankrupt the NHS | Mail Online
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on FacebookBet many of them are Americans,it would not happen if we had a real HEALTH CARE system instead of our WEALTH CARE system.
Nor do they come with trivial problems. It is specialist, expensive and resource-intensive treatments that they are after. The most common examples include complex pregnancies, cancer, HIV and renal dialysis.
NHS hospitals have overseas visitor officers whose job it is to identify and charge patients who are not eligible for free care.
And Jeremy Hunt has based his figure of £200‰million on the invoices which these officers have sent to patients who have been treated by the NHS.
But the fact is that most health tourists are either invisible to the overseas visitor officers or use loopholes in the regulations to get round them.
Which means that, in the vast majority of cases, no charge is made and no invoice is sent out. This means that the cost of their treatment does not appear in Hunt's £200‰million figure.
Read more: No other country lets foreigners exploit its health system the way we do. Health tourism is threatening to bankrupt the NHS | Mail Online
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on FacebookBet many of them are Americans,it would not happen if we had a real HEALTH CARE system instead of our WEALTH CARE system.
