Health Tourism: NHS Holidays

Have you tried getting a doctor's appointment recently? It's impossible. Unless you ring the second your doctor's surgery opens, and I literally mean the second the phone line opens. You are going to be waiting a very long time for an appointment, or even worse, the dreaded; "Sorry we don't have any appointments left for this week, try ringing back next week."

I'm not denying that the NHS is busy and over-stretched in recent years with certain budget cuts. However, i've come to learn that people from oversees (in the EU, and outside of) have had green tinted glasses on over our free health care, and decided to take a slice of our NHS cake. Which has been aptly dubbed as, 'health tourism.'

So it seems like the UK has another tourist attraction, the NHS. Move over queeny.

But who are these 'health tourists', I hear you cry! Well, let me explain to you. Any non British resident using the health care system; a tourist deliberately coming over to the UK for an operation, say a knee surgery and dear old nannies and grandads coming back over from Spain to see their 'trusted GP.'

But at what cost? 

It's been estimated that these tourists cost the UK tax payer, two billion pounds a year. While there are so many arguments for this, lets keep to the argument of looking at someone who specifically travels to the UK for surgery to leave the UK. 

Despite the fact that they are using our free health care system, instead of actually having to pay for it, they are also putting a strain on the NHS where taxpaying citizens are waiting for weeks on end for surgery that they are entitled to, instead someone has decided to take an NHS holiday.

Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has proposed that non-British residents would have to pay for emergency treatment such as A&E, a basic assessment by a Doctor in A&E costs at least £56, so this isn't cheap, but it is to help clampdown on these 'health tourists'. These charges are set to be introduced sometime in November to help fund some more money back into the NHS. 

While in April last year, the British Medical Association chair man, Mark Porter, spoke against these chargers; 

"Anyone accessing NHS services should be eligible to do so, but a doctor's duty is to treat the patient that's in front of them, not to act as a border guard."

Thanks, but no thanks, I don't think I want to share my slice of the NHS cake.