200 £million NHS black hole foreign health tourists

Not only is this unpleasant but also mean spirited.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to have spent more than my fair share in A&E recently and I watched as people needing treatment who were not resident in the U.K. had to fill in lots of forms etc and were questioned very closely.

What else do you expect the A&E apartments to do? Turn them away, when they were clearly in distress or needed urgent care.

Perhaps you would prefer an insurance based health service? Like the USA?

Well good luck with that and pray that you can always afford it and not get seriously ill.

The £200 million is only for invoices issued. The majority of hospitals don’t issue an invoice as they know is a waste of time.

I wonder where the idea for this thread came from?

The NHS budget for this financial year is £195.6 billion. £200 million is a very small black hole in the greater scheme of things, given you didn’t report how much is recouped from people who are not entitled to receive free treatment on the NHS, or what the cost to the NHS of chasing up those who should pay but don’t would be. Isolated headline threads are meaningless without the context.

What an unpleasant thread.

Luckygirl3 I am proud to live in a country that treats a sick human being as in need of help regardless of nationality

Well, in that case we all need to pay more tax so that we can treat the world's sick people, don't we?

Come on, we're being taken for a ride.

I know this is also ex-pats who come back, give their previous home address or the address of a relative, and get their treatment, then go back to wherever they are now.

I am proud to live in a country that treats a sick human being as in need of help regardless of nationality; but on a practical level there does need to be a system that allows for a financial contribution from someone from abroad.

Because as a country we appear to have given up, thrown in the towel on just about every front.
As a people we haven’t but our governments have.We deserve better.