Panorama Health Tourists

Can we agree by saying that there is something wrong with a bureaucracy when it’s so big and cumbersome that it can’t (or it’s not worth the effort to) stop people from abusing it?

I can certainly agree with that comment and it applies to welfare and tax as well. The last government built and enlarged the bureaucracy to such an extent that it is almost impossible to change it. But changed it must be before we are all sucked dry.

People seem to have £40,000,000 fixed in their minds. That I am sure is just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe it is the tip of the iceberg but you could look at it another way…

…let’s say the fraud is one-hundred times worse than the £40million over four years…..or £1billion per year.

That means more that 99% of the NHS annual budget of £104billion is spent on people who are entitled to it. I call that pretty good for a totally unregulated system.

It all comes down to cost; checking identity is expensive.

Take a look at the National Identity Card scheme that the UK tried to introduce to stop exactly this sort of fraud; it was abandoned in 2010 after nearly eight years of work and (at least) £250million of taxpayer’s money had been spent. The predicted costs of the scheme had ballooned to £4,500million!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8707355.stm

Can we agree by saying that there is something wrong with a bureaucracy when it’s so big and cumbersome that it can’t (or it’s not worth the effort to) stop people from abusing it?

[QUOTE=Lincoln 7;1937018]

Notwithstanding the debate going on about the £10 million, a paltry figure when set against the billions which should be being saved elsewhere, but surely every citizen of the EU has the right to medical treatment in member countries. As I have pointed out thousands of British citizens enjoy the excellent healthcare in other ember states.

I personally know 5 people, and there are no doubt countless others, who have travelled to France where they claim to get better treatment than here.

I take it that those who went to France, also India, received their treatment FREE?, as our NHS treatment is?.

Jim.
Lincoln .7

Yes – otherwise what’s the point in going?

People seem to have £40,000,000 fixed in their minds. That I am sure is just the tip of the iceberg. The problem is with no accounting or checking how do they know? Its the same with the illegals, no one knows the true figure for that either.

Oh I bet they have a good idea Paul, but they won’t admit it, as it would be seen as a failure being unable to control the illegals,but Hey, Ho, at 71, I am still paying Income Tax:), to allow them to have a better quality of life, than I bet you, I, and many others live.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

[QUOTE=charliehunt;1936962]Notwithstanding the debate going on about the £10 million, a paltry figure when set against the billions which should be being saved elsewhere, but surely every citizen of the EU has the right to medical treatment in member countries. As I have pointed out thousands of British citizens enjoy the excellent healthcare in other ember states.

I personally know 5 people, and there are no doubt countless others, who have travelled to France where they claim to get better treatment than here.

I take it that those who went to France, also India, received their treatment FREE?, as our NHS treatment is?.

Jim.
Lincoln .7

People seem to have £40,000,000 fixed in their minds. That I am sure is just the tip of the iceberg. The problem is with no accounting or checking how do they know? Its the same with the illegals, no one knows the true figure for that either.

Notwithstanding the debate going on about the £10 million, a paltry figure when set against the billions which should be being saved elsewhere, but surely every citizen of the EU has the right to medical treatment in member countries. As I have pointed out thousands of British citizens enjoy the excellent healthcare in other ember states.

I really don’t follow the bursting blood vessel arguments here, fuelled by a typical Panorama report. I personally know 5 people, and there are no doubt countless others, who have travelled to France where they claim to get better treatment than here.

A more balanced report would have been welcomed, but that’s hardly Panorama’s remit, unfortunately.

That’s a slippery slope.

So a crook shouldn’t be arrested if what he stole costs less than police time necessary to do the case? :rolleyes:

Well, I’m sure thousands-upon-thousands of crimes go un-investigated and unprosecuted in the UK every year based on economics.

Maybe it is a slippery-slope but the last thing the NHS needs now is any more levels of bureaucracy. Sure, it doesn’t sound too expensive but this is just the sort of thing that can cost a fortune without anybody really noticing; just one minute added to every NHS visit would cost hundreds of millions.

I don’t like it as it seems ‘wrong’ but there it is; sometimes the best way to save money for the patients who are entitled to treatment is to ignore those, very few, that aren’t!

CD, we’ll have to agree to disagree – you feel it isn’t worth while to try and plug this fraudulent abuse of the health service while I see people around me suffering due to lack of funds in the NHS…

As I said I don’t like it any more than you do but I’d rather see £10million in treatment ‘stolen’ from the NHS each year than spend £100million trying to stop it.

Look at the rough figures I posted earlier; just one minute checking identity for each prescription would cost the NHS £100milllion!

Even if it costs much more trying to prevent it than the actual ‘health tourism’ costs the NHS?

That’s a slippery slope.

So a crook shouldn’t be arrested if what he stole costs less than police time necessary to do the case? :rolleyes:

I don’t see how asking someone if they have a bit of identification…a drivers license, or even a library card would be that expensive.
What ID do people have to show to get benefits?
If people knew the NHS was asking, it might deter some.

The Freedom of Information requests sent to all 171 hospital trusts in England and Wales – of which 133 responded – found that one third were not asking patients whether or not they were resident in the UK and therefore eligible for treatment.

The FOI results showed that hospitals had written off at least £40m worth of care given to health tourists over a four year period, a figure that Conservative MP Chris Skidmore said did not reveal the extent of the cost to the NHS.

CD, we’ll have to agree to disagree – you feel it isn’t worth while to try and plug this fraudulent abuse of the health service while I see people around me suffering due to lack of funds in the NHS….

But still, people getting benefits to which they’re not entitled is wrong.

I never said it wasn’t.

If the NHS doesn’t do what it can to prevent it…that’s wrong too.

Even if it costs much more trying to prevent it than the actual ‘health tourism’ costs the NHS?

Paul and Bob, too right, When these “Health Tourists” turn up here, surely there must be a way of sending their Countries the bills they rack up to pay, if their Country of origin refuses to pay the bill, that Tourist gets banned from entry into the U.K. until the medical bill gets paid.

I got booked for speeding in Flagstaff, Arizona, 2 MPH over the limit, I was told by a Police Officer, who was a friend, if I had not paid the ticket, I would be refused entry into the USA in future, now if they can do it, why can’t we, for medical reasons?.ie the “Health Tourists”.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

I find it hard to accept that it is economically viable to take a cross-channel ferry to get contraceptive pills…..unless the pills are extortionate in France!
.

I’m just reporting what she told me.
And, she’s hardly an anti-foreigner xenophobe.
Her politics are left of centre…
She was just saying that UK taxpayers are being taken advantage of, she see’s it everyday.

One can make excuses for it all day long…perhaps her boyfriend is a UK citizen…so the UK should pay for his protection…:)
But still, people getting benefits to which they’re not entitled is wrong.
If the NHS doesn’t do whaty it can to prevent it…that’s wrong too.

I don’t like it any more than you do but there is no point ‘saving’ the NHS £10million a year from ‘health tourism’ if it costs the NHS £25million a year to do it!

Look at the practicalities; how are you going to check that each patient deserves the care they are getting? An identity check? Passport? Who is going to check them?

Just to give an idea of the scale of the problem, the NHS issues about a billion prescriptions per year. Let’s say we do an identity check at this point and it takes one minute. That’s a billion minutes, or about one-thousand-nine-hundred years of labour to check identities. At minimum wage that’s means the NHS is going to have to pay somebody over £100million to do these identity checks. And that’s just for ever prescription issued; how many NHS ‘visits’ are there per year?

TO right Bob!!!
I happen to be one of those who needs various procedures from Orthopedics.
They are delayed as my Hospital does not have the money except for all but critical cases. Needing at least one new knee and complex spinal surgery so I can be out of pain,walk without falling and getting rid of the pins and needles and or lack of feeling in my hands apparantly is not critical. Still I would not compain if those worse of than me get their operations IF they are UK citizens and are entitled to free care from the NHS.

So, continue allowing ‘insiders’ to commit fraud by sneaking non entitled foreign nationals into the system rather than even attempt to prevent it happening in future?

Stopping people stealing from shops costs money, stopping thugs from beating up innocent people on the street costs money, stopping burglaries costs money etc etc, shall we stop trying to prevent that because it costs about £5 billion in England & Wales to do just that.

We constantly read about patients being denied treatment because it costs too much – these ‘health tourists’ and their fixers are costing the lives of UK taxpaying patients. They are not entitled to treatment for whatever ailments they might have courtesy of the UK NHS.

Hmmm, makes no sense to me…

Yet another case of the Public sector going unchecked.

The issue isn’t the cost, but the attitude that it’s okay for everyone to live off us. In an ideal world that would be true, in the real world it’s going to bankrupt us.

10 years ago I was proud of our world leading NHS, now I look at it as an outdated ideal that’s bloated and rotten to the core.