Justin Tomlinson MP has recently shown his support for a campaign launched by Henry Smith MP (Conservative, Crawley) to look into the real cost of the healthcare provided by the NHS to foreign nationals.
Last year’s figures showed that whilst the under the European Health Insurance Card Scheme alone, the UK paid out £1.7 billion for the treatment of British nationals abroad, we only claimed back £125 million from qualifying countries.
When it comes to the treatment of foreign nationals not entitled to any free healthcare, Freedom of Information Act requests shows that most NHS trusts at best only sporadically audit what treatment they provide to such people. In other countries, a nominal charge is levied on foreign citizens, including Britons, for access to primary care.
Many hospitals do not even ask whether patients are foreign nationals, with one poll of NHS managers showing that a third of them did not routinely ask patients about their eligibility for free care.
Earlier in the year, Henry Smith introduced a Bill to Parliament – the NHS Audit Requirements (Foreign National) Bill – that aims to ensure that reciprocal arrangements have been made with other countries so that the British health budget is not unfairly burdened.
Justin Tomlinson MP said “The issue of so called ‘health tourism’ is an important one. Whilst we were the only party to promise and deliver increased funding to the NHS at the last election, an ageing population and increasingly expensive treatments is placing a strain on our NHS, without the additional burden of providing free healthcare to the citizens of other countries. The issue of fairness is key. Fairness to the taxpayers that fund the system and fairness to those that use it.
“I am delighted to have signed a letter to the Secretary of State imploring him to act to ensure that our NHS is not unfairly burdened and to try and get an idea of the scale of the problem. This is a crucial issue and one that I will continue to push on.”