Ministers keen to clamp down on Medical tourism. Migrants and overseas visitors are to face new charges for some NHS services in England, ministers say. Fees included will be extended prescription charges, higher charges for optical and dental treatment and the introduction of charges for some emergency treatment,
Health Minister Lord Howe said: "Having a universal health service
free at the point of use rightly makes us the envy of the world, but we
must make sure the system is fair to the hardworking British taxpayers
who fund it.
"We know that we need to make changes across the NHS to
better identify and charge visitors and migrants. Introducing charging
at primary care is the first step to achieving this.
"We are already looking at taking action and next year we
will set out our detailed plans to clamp down on the abuse of our NHS."
WHO GETS WHAT.
Free NHS care is offered to anyone living in the UK who has temporary or permanent permission to do so.
Asylum seekers, non-European Economic Area nationals who do not have
permission to live in the UK, British expats, and visitors usually have
to pay for treatment.
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 research suggests just £73m a year is recouped out of more than
£460m at present
However
Medical tourism is a lucrative source of income for the
NHS,
according to a major new study that contradicts many of the assumptions
behind the government's announcement that it will clamp down on
foreigners abusing the health service.
Eighteen hospitals – those
deemed most likely to be making money from overseas patients – earned
£42m in 2010, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine and York University. Medical tourists spent an
estimated £219m on hotels, restaurants, shopping and transport in the UK. the lead author of the new study, Johanna Hanefeld, from the faculty of
public health and policy at the LSHTM, said the government-commissioned
research published on Tuesday was "much more across the government
immigration agenda than anything to do with health"
Their work,
published in the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One,
looks at incoming and outgoing medical tourists. Those flying in to the
UK include expat Britons living in countries such as Spain which have
tightened up their own rules on access to healthcare, they say.
Some
NHS hospitals earn substantial sums of money from medical tourists and
others could join them in doing so, say Hanefeld and colleagues
This post contains excerpts from http://bbc.in/19D1lPN and http://bit.ly/19D1p24
