Doctors push to stop charging overseas patients for their treatment at NHS hospitals

DOCTORS have backed a decision to stop billing foreign patients for NHS care.

Calling it "fundamentally racist," up to 500 medics voted in favour of abandoning fees at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Belfast.

"We are doctors not border guards," said Dr Omar Risk on Monday (24). "Charging migrants for accessing NHS services is a fundamentally racist endeavour – we are complicit in the oppressive regime."

Dr Jackie Applebee, a GP in east London who proposed the motion, said the policy was a breach of the founding spirit of the NHS.

“Determining eligibility for free NHS care will inevitably lead to racial profiling,” she said. “For if the sheep are to be separated from the goats, both must be classified. What began as an attempt to keep the health service for ourselves would end by being a nuisance to everybody.

“Charging is not only harmful for those who are charged, it has public health implications for us all and introducing charging for some makes it easier to extend charging to the rest of us.”

Only patients ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK – usually for at least six months – are eligible for free NHS care. EU citizens with an EHIC card can get it for free. Everyone else should be charged up front.

Giving evidence to MPs on the health and social care select committee on Tuesday (25), health minister Stephen Hammond came under fire for the policy. But he ruled out any rethink and refused to publish the results of the government’s review into its effects.

Conservative MP Andrew Percry criticised the move, saying: "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."

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “British taxpayers support the NHS and it is only right that overseas visitors also make a contribution to our health service so everyone can receive urgent care when they need it.

“While people who are not UK residents have had to pay for NHS care for nearly 40 years, we have exemptions in place to protect public health and the most vulnerable patients. Urgent treatment must never be withheld, regardless of whether charges may apply.”