Migrants Arriving In UK Will Face An NHS Entry Fee

[Babz]

ALL foreigners arriving in Britain will face a fee of up to thousands of pounds to pay for their healthcare.
The levy will be mandatory for everyone except tourists for any stay longer than six months in a new Government plan.
It will be paid upfront, before migrants know whether they will need any treatment and will be imposed even if they have private health insurance, The Sun can reveal.
The scheme — which hopes to recoup the £200million a year the NHS currently pays treating non-Brits — will be unveiled by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt tomorrow.
A senior source told The Sun: “The pressures on the health service are already huge with our ageing population, so we need to start relieving the burden.
“A migrant flat fee re-introduces the important contributory principle. Why should foreigners get treatment for free, while British citizens pay for theirs through their taxes?”
The charge’s exact figure has yet to be decided, and is expected to be put out to a public consultation.
But a heated row is raging in the Coalition over whether it should be set at a few hundred pounds or to several thousand, The Sun has learned.
And the proposals are already facing strong opposition from the Business and Education departments.
Ministers there insist it could hit investment and talent coming in to the country by making it too expensive for many — as well as slashing colleges’ and universities’ potential income.
The levy — which already exists in some nations such as Australia — will appear in the government’s flagship Immigration Bill in the autumn.
Mr Hunt will also unveil a new registration and tracking system to spot freeloading foreign patients trying to rip off British taxpayers.




Culled from: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... y-fee.html

[ouflak1]

ALL foreigners arriving in Britain will face a fee of up to thousands of pounds to pay for their healthcare.
The levy will be mandatory for everyone except tourists for any stay longer than six months in a new Government plan.
It will be paid upfront, before migrants know whether they will need any treatment and will be imposed even if they have private health insurance, The Sun can reveal.

Well atleast it's fair.

The scheme — which hopes to recoup the £200million a year the NHS currently pays treating non-Brits — will be unveiled by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt tomorrow.

Wow. I had heard that the NHS was in the red with unpaid NHS bills to foreigners. But that's a lot of money.

A senior source told The Sun: “The pressures on the health service are already huge with our aging population, so we need to start relieving the burden.
“A migrant flat fee re-introduces the important contributory principle. Why should foreigners get treatment for free, while British citizens pay for theirs through their taxes?”

*shrug* If we are paying taxes into the system... extremely high taxes I might add... then we have already 'paid' for our treatment. I'm damned certain the share of my tax money that has gone into the NHS has far more than paid for the birth of my two children and their subsequent vaccinations. Even Britons should realize that their health care system isn't 'free'. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We all pay for it somehow.

Ministers there insist it could hit investment and talent coming in to the country by making it too expensive for many — as well as slashing colleges’ and universities’ potential income.

Well you have to try to find a reasonable balance between having too many people overall, and where you can best cut that back a bit. Legal immigration is an obvious place to get started. There has to be pain somewhere. I can think of no way to do this without somebody suffering because of it. Nobody has ever said it is going to be easy.

The levy — which already exists in some nations such as Australia — will appear in the government’s flagship Immigration Bill in the autumn.

Is this the £3000 thing? Or is this something on top of that?

[Babz]

The levy — which already exists in some nations such as Australia — will appear in the government’s flagship Immigration Bill in the autumn.

Is this the £3000 thing? Or is this something on top of that?

Something on top of it...

[LankanFunkin]

I get the feeling this something aimed at health-tourists from EEA countries, students, etc. vs. economic migrants (Tier 1,2)

Is that possible?

[Casa]

Bear in mind that this has been printed in The Sun newspaper.

[Babz]

Bear in mind that this has been printed in The Sun newspaper.

NOT JUST THE SUN....THE DAILY MAIL HAS IT AS WELL!..


All foreigners face being charged thousands of pounds BEFORE they can use the NHS
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to unveil crackdown tomorrow.
Migrants will also have to pay to visit a GP under immigration laws.
Doctors and nurses are unhappy at becoming 'border force'.

Foreigners will have to pay thousands of pounds up front before being able to use the UK’s National Health Service.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt will also charge migrants to visit a GP to curb the impact of benefit tourists.
Latest figures show that for every £100 the NHS spent on caring for health tourists last year, only £23 has been paid back.
Mr Hunt will tomorrow unveil a crackdown on loopholes which allow migrants to wrongly access free UK health care.
He will vow to cut the £200 million annual bill for treating foreigners.
However, Brits who live abroad, who currently face paying for care if they live permanently overseas, are set to be given guaranteed access to free NHS healthcare.
The help will be available once they have paid 10 years of national insurance contributions.
The new Immigration Bill, introduced during the Queen's speech in May, outlined plans for incomers' accessing NHS services to make a contribution to the cost of their care, either with their own money or through their government.
Mr Hunt said: ‘No one expects health workers to become immigration guards and we want to work alongside doctors to bring about improvements, but I'm clear we must all work together to protect the NHS from costly abuse.
‘We want a system that is fair for the British taxpayer by ensuring that foreign nationals pay for their NHS treatment.


‘By looking at the scale of the problem and at where and how improvements can be made we will help ensure the NHS remains sustainable for many years to come.’
The plan to charge people who arrive in the UK before they can use the NHS has proven controversial, with divisions in the coalition about whether it should be a few hundred or several thousand pounds.


Mr Hunt will launch a consultation on the detail of the plans, which will be included in the Immigration Bill when it is published in the autumn.
When the idea was first announced in the Queen’s Speech nurses and doctors were furious at the idea of being asked to conduct immigration checks.
GP leaders said they ‘have a duty of care to all people’.
An audit will be launched into how much overseas patients and short-term residents cost the health service.
Around £33 million went on the treatment of foreign nationals in hospitals in 2011/12, of which around £12m was written off.
According to Department of Health research, less than half of overseas visitors using hospitals are identified and only half of their costs are recovered, but officials pointed to a 2003 report by insurers CCI that put the cost at between £50m and £200m.
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) warned against introducing reforms that could put doctors in an ‘invidious position of being the new border agency’.


RCGP chairman Clare Gerada said: ‘GPs must not become a new 'border agency' in policing access to the NHS. GPs have a duty of care to all people seeking healthcare and should not be expected to turn people away when they are at their most vulnerable.
‘It is important to protect individuals and public health and General Practice must remain the main access to health care within the NHS.
‘Whilst the health system must not be abused and we must bring an end to health tourism, it is important that we do not overestimate the problem and that GPs are not placed in the invidious position of being the new border agency.
‘We hear that the consultation will have specific proposals and questions for clinicians and NHS organisations. The RCGP will be making clear its views and we encourage our colleagues across the health service to do the same.’
Doctors at a British Medical Association conference last week said it would be discriminatory to ask for documentation from patients who ‘happen to look foreign and talk funny’.


Taken from:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

[ouflak1]

GPs must not become a new 'border agency' in policing access to the NHS. GPs have a duty of care to all people seeking healthcare and should not be expected to turn people away when they are at their most vulnerable.

I don't think that's what is being proposed. GPs should give treatment as normal. The assumption would be made that if the patient were someone who would be mandated to pay before using the NHS, that this payment would have been made well before they ever got in front of a GP. A GP/Nurse shouldn't have to even consider the matter.

And certainly emergency services would be exempt of the requirement.

[thebionicredneck2003]

Whilst I understand that this is not yet set in stone and there will be more discussions before this finally sees the light of day, I am curious to know how they will quantify the amount to be paid i.e someone going to the GP for a flu and someone going for a more serious condition.

[bobbylad]

£200m spent treating non Brits includes all the EEA migrants living in the UK. Given the NHS budget is more than 500 times that figure the actual number spent on non EU migrants is tiny and not worth the administrative cost of setting up a system to recoup it. This is all just headline grabbing nonsense, not to mention it is illegal to deny live saving care to someone anyway and I doubt that will change.

[Babz]

Foreigners will be charged around £200-a-year towards the cost of healthcare in a bid to tackle so-called health tourism.
Ministers will outline plans to introduce the charge for foreign workers and students who come to the UK for more than half a year.
A Department of Health spokesman said the cost would "ensure that migrants contribute towards the cost of their healthcare while not increasing red tape and administration for NHS professionals".
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce a public consultation on the move as part of a raft of changes to immigration laws.
He will say: "We need to ensure that those residing or visiting the UK are contributing to the system in the same way as British taxpayers, and ensure we do as much as possible to target illegal migration.
"We have been clear that we are a national health service not an international health service and I am determined to wipe out abuse in the system.
"The NHS is a national treasure and we need to work with the entire health system to develop plans and make sure it is sustainable for years to come."
He will also outline plans to end free access to GPs for short-term visitors and pledge to cut the bill for treating tourists which currently stands at £200m
The changes are part of a government-wide push to cut down on abuse of British services but doctors warned they feared being turned into a "form of immigration control".
Earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron said that immigrants cannot expect "something for nothing" in the UK.
Labour's shadow health minister Liz Kendall MP said: "In its three years in power the Government has a poor record on announcing policies that sound good but prove to be completely unworkable. We will have many questions to ask about the details when they are published but the key tests for their proposals are: can they be properly enforced and will they save more money than they cost to put in place?
"The public and NHS staff must be confident that any new measures are about getting taxpayers a better deal and ensuring fairness, not playing politics with our NHS."

Culled from:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/health-tourism ... ml#0BBHest

[thebionicredneck2003]

If it is £200 and not thousands of pounds, I think it is reasonable to pay that amount for a year to use the NHS.

Hopefully, this would apply to everyone and not a subset of foreigners like they are proposing for the bond for high risk countries.

[Babz]

If it is £200 and not thousands of pounds, I think it is reasonable to pay that amount for a year to use the NHS.

Hopefully, this would apply to everyone and not a subset of foreigners like they are proposing for the bond for high risk countries.

Are you sure it won't rise to a thousand in 3-4 years' time?

[GrahamD85]

It's unclear who, if this comes in, this will affect - will it just be students or will those with permanent residency/ILR and jobs have to cough up too?

It may be 'standard' in some countries, but I'd hate to live in a place where those out of work couldn't get free medical help.

What's even more disturbing is the figure he's trying to 'crack down' on - less than 0.2% of the NHS spending!

[ouflak1]

Foreigners will be charged around £200-a-year towards the cost of healthcare in a bid to tackle so-called health tourism.
Ministers will outline plans to introduce the charge for foreign workers....

And here is the part where I'm having a bit of a disconnect. If you are working in the UK legally, you are automatically paying into the NHS. The same is true if you are a student who is also working. Either these ministers are under the false impression that the NHS truly is 'free' for citizens but miraculously suddenly has actual costs when a foreigner is involved, or they believe that foreign workers are paying into the NHS significantly less than they are costing the NHS (something I would question earnestly and insist on a comparison to citizens payments-in/costs). I can understand the charge for non-working students and other non-working immigrants. But anybody who starts working in the UK legally, starts paying for the NHS, whether they know it, like it, use it or not.

[ouflak1]

It's unclear who, if this comes in, this will affect - will it just be students or will those with permanent residency/ILR and jobs have to cough up too?

If they want to start charging me a yearly NHS fee, no problem. I just want a refund on all the taxes I've paid into the NHS, minus the charge for my children's birth's/vaccinations (although one was born a citizen... so she may not count....). Seems fair enough to me and I'll come out so far ahead that I can probably just stuff my tax refund into a savings account and pay the yearly NHS fee, no matter how much it is, out of the interest earned.

[thebionicredneck2003]

I could be wrong, but I don't think it will affect people who already work and live in the UK, as they already make a contribution via tax and N.I.

From what I can surmise, it will be targeted at people who will have slightly longer term visas but are not necessarily here to work e.g students.

I can understand what the government is trying to do as we can all agree that the immigration system has been badly abused and they need to curb the abuse.

My major issue over the last few months has been the smear campaign in the media and by the present government that attributes everything going wrong in the country to immigrants without any real factual backing.

[thebionicredneck2003]

This document is an interesting read as it details the proposal

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... cument.pdf

If the consultation is approved, then in the future, people with a tier 1 visa or a tier 2 visa will still need to pay use the NHS even though they pay tax and N.I.

The document leads me to more questions than answers

[dandm]

This seems incredibly unfair. My family already paid in excess of £70,000 pounds last year in tax, we paid £3500 to renew our Tier 1 visas, yet we still have to pay additional funds to access a service we have not used (we have used Private GPs and Consultants).

I don't see how they can legally impose this on top of income tax and NI.

[thebionicredneck2003]

This seems incredibly unfair. My family already paid in excess of £70,000 pounds last year, we paid £3500 to renew our Tier 1 visas, yet we still have to pay additional funds to access a service we have not used (we have used Private GPs and Consultants).

I don't see how they can legally impose this on top of income tax and NI.

From the document, there will be some concessions. For example, people who use Private Care.

The problem with ideas like this, is that although the intentions may be good, the implementation will end up causing a lot of hassle.

It will be very interesting to see how this unfolds

[dandm]

I have read the document and there is a proposal that certain visa classes may opt out and use private care, but if you do so you will also be liable for the costs of any emergency care, which I don't think our insurance covers. Furthermore, no insurance policy here covers pre-existing conditions or chronic conditions.

I think it's a very poor policy. Fair enough to discourage visitors coming to use the service, but once you are paying the high taxes and NI I don't think it's appropriate to levy what could be thousands more on top. They are already charging us outrageous fees for a visa. It's like they are trying to get rid of migrants simply by chucking as many charges on top of us as is possible for only the rich to pay.

In Australia (an example they cite) temporary migrants must pay for their medical care, but the Medicare system only allows small rebates back for citizens anyway, so it's not a big loss. You pay lower income tax but you tend to pay around 50% of your health costs out of your own pocket (unless you have insurance). Public hospitals can be free but you end up paying just about all of the cost of doctor and consultant fees as well as charges for scans etc yourself. So it is not analogous. Here we are paying very high tax as well as NI, which is how they do the free healthcare thing. Why segregate classes of tax payer? There are plenty of people here (citizens) who have not worked a day in their life, are being paid welfare out of the tax of migrants, yet will be eligible for free healthcare whilst someone who pays 50K+ tax a year and has been here for four years is not.

[ouflak1]

I have read the document and there is a proposal that certain visa classes may opt out and use private care, but if you do so you will also be liable for the costs of any emergency care, which I don't think our insurance covers.

As long as my 'opting out' means that I don't pay one pence, not in taxes, not in fees, nothing, for health care that I don't have access to, I'm fine with that. I'll take that money saved and buy my own insurance. I don't know what you meant with 'our insurance', but it is a trivial Google search to find insurance that covers emergency care here in the UK.

Furthermore, no insurance policy here covers pre-existing conditions or chronic conditions.

This is tough, but you can still find insurance (considerably more work than a Google search) even in these cases. It will be expensive ofcourse, if it's allowed for the particular case and conditions. Otherwise, it will come out of your pocket, which sucks and leaves a permanently bad feeling with immigrants, but so be it.

If I don't have access to it, then I don't pay for it. If I have to pay, and I have options, then I get to decide where every single pence of my money spent on those options goes. Totally fair.

[dandm]

The opt-out is only a suggestion, there is no guarantee it will happen. They refer to it applying only to "some visa classes" as well. Things are very vague at this stage.

Our (as in my family's) insurance does not cover emergency care. Lucky you if yours does. It is not easy to change as our policy currently covers pre-existing conditions (only because it is corporate) though not chronic ones. Very few policies do cover these things so if we change we lose that. My point is simply that when you go to actually use the private insurance here you will find it to be extremely limited, with many exclusions. Have you used it? The nature of insurance in the UK is that you are paying for something that rarely pays out!

Overall my point is that I don't see why immigrants who pay NI should pay an additional fee. In the Netherlands as a migrant if you don't have access to social security or health care you don't pay national insurance. We are paying for something we cannot access. But go ahead and celebrate the fact you might be able to opt-out.

[dandm]

It should be noted that per the document even once you pay this levy, you will still potentially be paying for visits to GPs and Consultants on top. This is one of the discussion matters.

[ouflak1]

if you don't have access to social security or health care you don't pay national insurance. We are paying for something we cannot access. But go ahead and celebrate the fact you might be able to opt-out.

I'll 'celebrate' if that opting out means I don't pay the taxes to NHS, and get to use that non-paid tax money as I see fit to take care of my health coverage.

[dandm]

if you don't have access to social security or health care you don't pay national insurance. We are paying for something we cannot access. But go ahead and celebrate the fact you might be able to opt-out.

I'll 'celebrate' if that opting out means I don't pay the taxes to NHS, and get to use that non-paid tax money as I see fit to take care of my health coverage.

Well it depends how high the levy is. If it's towards the low end of what is mooted then it will remain cheaper to pay the NHS levy than take out private health insurance. Most insurance policies do not cover GP visits, and if this goes ahead I don't think the levy will cover NHS GPs either. So either way you'll be paying for insurance or levy + GP fees.

You seem to think paying for insurance covers all your medical costs. You are sadly mistaken. There are more exclusions than inclusions. I have two policies (primary and a secondary "gap" one that is supposed to cover holes) but still face many additional charges.

As it is, whether or not you go down the private road or opt for paying the levy + NHS GP and Consultant fees you are going to be vastly more out of pocket if you get sick than you are currently. Not sure why anybody would be happy about this, particularly if they are paying a lot of tax and NI as we certainly are.