£2.8 bn is the cost to the British National Health Service of treating everyone who is not a British national: students, workers on visas, tourists, immigrants, expats popping back to see their old GP and yes “health tourists”. One figure puts deliberate abuse of the NHS by the un-entitled at £200m a year, which is a lot less than nearly £2bn. But I wonder about this £200m.
One weekend I had to go to St.Mary’s Hospital Emergency Department in London. The whole waiting room was full of Arabs, some fully covered, some very pregnant. I waited for hours while they were attended to, and when my turn came I asked the nurse what arrangements there were for charging the clearly affluent Arabic clientele. “None,” she replied, “we have no computer and no price list”. The waiting room of the local doctor’s surgery is a smaller imitation of the same thing. I have no idea how much medical tourism there realistically is, but my guess is that £200m a year is just that, a guess.
In so far as this cheating causes resentment and loss of peace of mind, it is un-Epicurean. More sinisterly it aids the cause of those bent on privatising the health service. The advocates of this straightforward theft of taxpayer assets see nothing wrong in making big profits out of the sick and disabled. Tomorrow: a shocking case of flagrant greed in the medical world.
At a dinner party the other day I sat next to a person who is a medical blunt privatiser. I thought of suggesting that there is a limited supply of trained medics and if you privatise them and their hospitals etc. you merely put the same people under the umbrella of a profit- making corporation. This always means fewer jobs and poorer service. But it was a social occasion and I held my peace.
Firstly, are you sure that the Arabs you saw in the room were Saudi Arabians and not Muslim immigrants? Secondly, when we go to other countries, we pay either through the EHIC or through travel insurance, so its fairly reasonable to assume others do the same when they come here. Also, the people you mention (students, workers on visas etc…) contribute to the NHS through the taxes they pay. But because they are much younger than the general population (very few people move to the UK to retire), they are much less likely to get ill. I’m not an especially pro-immigration person. But on this issue, I would advise peace of mind 🙂
You’re absolutely right that this aids the cause of the privatisers. But there is a key weakness in their argument: what about the vast swathes of Britain where there are hardly any immigrants or tourist, and therefore no health tourism. Should those places face a fundamental change in the system, simply because of problems that only affect hospitals in select areas? Of course not. All I would say is that the areas where there are more immigrants and tourists tend to be richer (that’s why people go there), so those areas can afford any burden that those people bring.