Doctors have voted to stop billing foreign patients for NHS care.
Medics backing the motion said charging made health staff ‘complicit in racism’ and ‘racial profiling’.
Up to 500 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning the fees at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Belfast.
‘We are doctors not border guards,’ said Dr Omar Risk in Monday’s debate. ‘Charging migrants for accessing NHS services is a fundamentally racist endeavour – we are complicit in the oppressive regime.’
Doctors who opposed the move were booed as they spoke.
Conservative MPs said that opening up the NHS to the rest of the world was reckless when its resources were so stretched.
Doctors have voted to stop billing foreign patients for NHS care. Up to 500 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning the fees at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Belfast. Doctors who opposed the move were booed as they spoke. (File image of the BMA)
Health tourism is thought to cost anything from £200million to £2billion a year. The BMA, which is one of the country’s most powerful trade unions, will now lobby the Department of Health to overhaul the charging system.
Although the Government sets the rules, they function only if doctors follow them.
Tory MP Andrew Percy said: ‘It is incredible that some doctors want to open up the NHS to health tourism from people overseas who haven’t paid in.
‘Perhaps instead doctors who support this could pay for the treatment of these people themselves.
‘Most people would expect our NHS services to be reserved for those who are living here permanently and who are contributing to our system.’
Fellow Conservative MP Philip Hollobone said: ‘The BMA is completely out of touch with public opinion on this issue.
‘There is nothing racist about charging international tourists for the care they receive over here. Every pound spent treating health tourists is a pound not spend on British citizens.’
Only patients ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK – usually for at least six months – are eligible for free NHS care.
EU citizens can also get it for free, provided they have an EHIC card.
Everyone else should be charged up front before treatment begins and doctors, nurses and receptionists are legally obliged to check a patient’s status first.
The only situations where this does not apply are those involving lifesaving procedures or treatment in A&E units. GP surgeries are also free for all.
Conservative MPs said that opening up the NHS to the rest of the world was reckless when its resources were so stretched. Tory MP Andrew Percy said: ‘It is incredible that some doctors want to open up the NHS to health tourism from people overseas who haven’t paid in. Perhaps instead doctors who support this could pay for the treatment of these people themselves'
But the rules will work only if doctors cooperate, particularly as they hold so much authority in individual hospitals and departments.
In the BMA debate on the issue on Monday night, a motion was proposed arguing that it was ‘not cost effective to monitor eligibility for NHS Care’. It called for ‘the policy of charging migrants for NHS care to be abandoned and for the NHS to be free for all at the point of delivery’.
Dr Jackie Appleby, who proposed the motion, said charging immigrants for NHS care was a form of ‘racial profiling’ and not cost-effective.
She said: ‘The cost of treating migrants and overseas visitors on the NHS is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall budget. The cost of health tourism is disputed. It’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things.’
Speaking against the motion, Dr George Rae said dropping fees would
