The Guardian reports this morning that:
Patients could be told to bring two forms of identification including a passport to hospital to prove they are eligible for free treatment under new rules to stop so-called health tourism.
The most senior official in the Department of Health told MPs on Monday that he was looking at making hospitals check patients' papers to find out whether they should be paying, a proposal he admitted was “controversial”.
I think this is more than controversial. I would suggest it is utterly unreasonable. First that is because many people do not have, and have no reason to have, a passport. I see no reason why they should be put through the stress of securing one. And yes, it is stressful: the rules on who may and may not sign passport photos for identification purposes are deeply socially discriminatory and elitist and are a real barrier for many. If identity has to be proved then a passport is not the way to do it.
Second, to require a passport that is not required for any other reason to secure HNS treatment is to impose a new tax on access to the NHS. I know there will be those who will suggest that £72.50 is a trifling sum. When half the country has savings of less than £100 I beg to differ. This is a new tax on healthcare that is wholly unacceptable and creates the real prospect that some will be denied the essential care they need on the grounds of being unable to secure a passport they do not otherwise need on the grounds of not knowing anyone of the right social status to confirm their identity or of cost.
If you want a symbol of an uncaring society at class warfare with itself then this proposal is it.
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Never mind the personal interview for the passport. For me, the nearest place was 25 miles from home. And no parking.
And, Richard, for your information, getting a job without a passport/drivers licence (EU accepted) is very hard work. A passport will be required by prospective employers, given the rather expensive penalties for enlisting illegals.
I have found a driver’s licence works just fine
I note this morning that the “benefit reduction on excessive accomodation space” (bedroom tax) that was to have affected the elder voter, has now been deferred. To 2019. Am I to take that to mean an early election is being planned?
With a significant proportion of the “grey” vote being alienated, I would have considered deferment to 2021 better!
It’s worse than uncaring: pre-natal care is a window of opportunity to deport the mother and ensure that her child is born outside the United Kingdom.
She will, of course, be free to raise the money for an out-of-country appeal: so, two or three years down the line, she will be able to return, asserting her right to reside in this country if she is prepared leave behind a child who does not have right of residence.
Feel free to consult the law and contradict me: but consult any South London immigration lawyer, and be prepared to be told that, in practice, she and her child would be refused entry, put on a plane back, and told to appeal out-of-country. No matter what their rights actually are.
May’s officials – and they are very much her officials, even though she’s no longer their minister – relish their discretionary power to act out such unlawful high-handedness, every day of the week.
Sometimes, thinking the worst of people only reveals that you were unduly optimistic, and that they are worse than you think: I have to tell you that your natural goodwill and the commendable urge to think well of people should not apply to Britain’s immigration authorities.
£72.50 assumes that you don’t need it in a hurry – “Mr Murphy, we’ve brought your appointment forward three weeks because of a cancellation, can you come in on Friday?”
Under those circumstances you’re looking at double the price for the passport plus an expensive trip of anything up to 200 miles to collect it.
And this is to pull back £500m a year, when Government stupidity over Brexit is losing us billlions a week…
Agreed
I am 72 and a long term cancer survivor. with a very thick hospital file. I do not have a driving license any more for health reasons and unless I become a refugee I have no need of a passport. My financial situation does not lead me to Travel outside the country and barely within it. Taking away the old pension book method of paying pensions to
O A P s did away with a very acceptable form of proof of ID.
(I must also admit to being very cross with DVLC over the requirement to produce evidence of to marriage and two divorces. Do they require the same of men?)
Once again I am impressed by your grasp of how basic living can be.
Being married to a GP helps a grounding in reality
I understood that people who have been allowed in to UK on a visa have to make an annual payment to entitle them to NHS care. These 2 documents would not show whether you had or had not paid.
This is stage1 in setting up the systems for an insurance based healthcare system – we are well on the way to it. I imagine the impending failure of Sustainability and Transformation plans will allow this Government to say that we can no longer afford the NHS / cut the range of NHS services drastically and introduce an insurance scheme to cover the areas that NHS no longer provides. It will then morph into a full insurance based system.
That is the risk
This ludicrous measure is just part of the anti immigration nonsense peddled by the right, and that in itself is a way to distract attention from the real reasons the NHS cannot cope with the demands placed upon it.
This government has underfunded the NHS by imposing real term cuts in its budget; by privatisation; by wrecking social care through huge cuts to council budgets, and by attacking the morale of NHS staff. Glad to hear Mark Porter of the BMA on R4 this morning point out that the supposed £200m this measure is meant to recover is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions lost through Government underfunding. It would be nice to believe enough people heard him so this government can’t get away with this nonsense.
But hey, play the anti immigrant, ‘foreign scrounger’ card for the benefit of the sewer press and the gullible cretins who can be conned into believing this trash. Britain 2016…..a country run by brazen liars, voted for by idiots.
If you require someone with a working visa to pay separately for the NHS then they’re paying twice. Because they’re paying national insurance through their wages too.
Jersey sees itself as a model for the future with discrimination based upon 5 years residence to have employment choice and 10 years for the right to rent or buy housing – linked to social and health benefits after 5 years only. This applies to all “newcomers” – even those from the UK. If Jersey can do it why not the UK.
Minor technical problem with demanding a passport. Approximately 10 million UK citizens do not hold one. Driving licences? More than 20 million new citizens do not hold one. It is highly likely that many of these hold neither. So this would be a blatant discrimination against the poor, elderly, and disabled, the classic target group for Conservative benefit cuts.
A much more sensible method would be to observe that most people requiring non-urgent care would be referred to the hospital by a GP practice. Often the practice will have records going back many years that can confirm long-term UK residence and provide that confirmation to hospital. However given that they are trying to save about £200 million any of these changes are likely to be significantly more expensive to bring into operation making likely net savings negligible.
Farsical.
So managing demand on the NHS has come to this?
This is an outrageous idea. How would it work at A & E for goodness sake?
All that has to happen is for the NHS to be funded properly. That has not happened since 2010.
If one of these limited scale pilots were to find a workable and economically viable way of restricting not urgent healthcare from those who are not entitled to it (and do not contribute towards it), would people still object simply on the basis that they don’t, as a matter of principle, think health tourists (and I include within that people in the UK illegally) should be prevented from getting free non-emergency healthcare?
Your premise is false
The argument is not worth considering in that case
What premise is false? From what I’ve read it appears that the NHS is testing different ways of confirming that people are entitled to treatment, to prevent abuse from those who are not. That seems perfectly reasonable.
As long as the process doesn’t cost more than it’s worth, and there is a way of dealing with those who have a legitimate right to the treatment but may have technical issues registering, then that also seems perfectly reasonable. The NHS is a great resource but it’s not actually free, it’s free at point of delivery to those who are entitled, so it seems perfectly reasonable to require people to demonstrate they are entitled. Those who aren’t entitled to services free at point of delivery can make arrangements to pay just like happens all over the world.
Most people who are treated by the NHS who are not resident are emergency cases
GPs are not covered by this scheme
So it is looking for medics to say people are not emergencies, can travel, and so are denied care
That is ethically nigh on impossible
And massively costly
Whilst laying the path for tiered access e.g. Insured or not
Please open your eyes
Its a ploy to get a national identity card for every one. Today its stated a passport will be required, soon to be replaced with “Our NHS loyalty card” that will be proclaimed to cost less. Another outsourcing opportunity for Tory donor companies. Are we getting closer to a RFDI chip in our neck?
Davy Cameron would have trumpeted “its only fair………. to hard stretched tax payers”.
No need for passport, driving licence proves who you are, but if you don’t have one, every person who is a British citizen or is entitled to live here is given a National Health Number (AB 12 34 56 A), surely that would do
Indeed
So how do you stop those not entitled to free medical care from accessing it.
Allowing this is almost the same as simply sending money to a host of countries every month and saying feel free to use it as you see fit – this is not what our taxes are meant for.
There is an issue here but it costs very little and putting it right wou;ld cost a great deal
Solving big chunks of the tax gap would be far easier to do and so is of much more benefit to the country but it does not involve foreign people, much. It does not generate as much heat as a result . So I conclude economics is not the issue and race and nationality are. And p[eople’s racism is not an appropriate decision making priority for government