Health tourist?

I wouldn't die quietly just because someone decided that it was too expensive to save my life.

I'd make as much fuss as possible. Get in the papers/on the TV. Try to find out who makes the decisions. I might still die but I wouldn't go down without a fight.

Anyone heard any more about the Albanian man who was going to be deported after they had discovered a brain tumour? He seems to have disappeared off the radar.

I think he has returned to his own country as they have adequate if not better facilities to treat him.

Good news for him- let's hope. Any more news of the little girl?

On an aside, when you move abroad, the law requires you to deregister from your GP. Your GP continues to be paid (a pitance, but even so) if you stay on his/her register, and yet you are no longer entitled to treatment. The system does rely on some honesty, I still have a valid NHS card for free prescriptions and medicines, but I would not dream of using it, as it would be fraudulent. If I need anything I can't get here, I will get and pay for a private prescription.

Sometime ago I was shouted down as I mentioned that I had met several people in the Royal Marsden who travelled to the Uk for chemo or transfusions . They would use a family members address for correspondence or even just a friend. Several had the hospital paying for their transport back to the relatives home and were quite open about this to others in the ward and in front of the nursing staff. It is dishonest but until we have the same scrutiny as you would get in the rest of the world people will abuse the system. I was very shocked at the dishonesty but also the disbelief on Gransnet.

Indeed- I imagine the fraud and cost re. expats living abroad and coming back for NHS treatment and drugs is huge - but considered quite ok by those who perpetrate it. We actually have an official address in the UK, as we have kept a small flat there- but it is not our main residence and we no longer pay tax in the UK, so are not entitled to NHS anymore (despite paying all our lives towards it, and despite OH having dedicated his life to the NHS).

Stangran I think this happens a lot. I had a friend who retired to another country telling all and sundry that this country had gone to the dogs. When her cancer returned she came back to the UK for treatment having not told her GP or consultant that she was no longer resident here. I think she gave someone else's address. She was treated at the Royal Marsden and received all prescriptions, food supplements and sun creams free as well of course as the radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

I had very mixed feeling about this as she has spent all of her working life in this country and contributed accordingly. However, she chose to live elsewhere and chose to be a taxpayer in that country because it was financially beneficial to her.

As you say it was fraudulent but in her case it was also highly hypocritical.

What realla does rile me, is the multi millionaires I know, foreign but who have lived in the UK for decades as non-doms- and have NHS treatment!!!

I do not think I would tell people that, Meercat. I am sure she could have been treated here if she had paid.
She was probably one of those people who criticises economic migrants, too.

My ex mother in law has had a lot of cardiac surgery performed and she travels from Spain and stays with one of her "children" in England- this is fraudulent- she chose to live in Spain why not be treated there?

The ex mother in law before her developed pancreatic cancer, hopped omn a plane and was treated but died in England. Three ex mother in laws- was not I lucky?