Racist Woman on Croydon tram given community sentence

[transmanche]

I really have no idea what is in these newspapers because I never read them, or indeed any other daily newspaper now that up to the minute news is readily available online.

So, where exactly online do you read your 'news'?

 

[bb21]

The programme shows people flying in, asking around their communities to find out if its possible to get a fraudulent NHS card and the community pointing out which people are in charge at which doctors surgeries and how much it will cost. It certainly takes time to do (a few weeks) but as long as they produce the cash which I vaguely think was a couple of hundred quid ??
Like you say, not sure with the same people in charge if any new rules will make any difference.:roll:

From what you have described, it would seem that the problem is people carrying out illegal activities rather than the system allowing foreign nationals to freely receive NHS treatment. A problem for law enforcement than immigration. Completely different things.

Let's move away from the focus on the Sun or the Daily Fail. It is no longer the tabloids. Many of the broadsheets these days realise that if they don't take a populist approach and jump on the bandwagon, their sales will just dwindle even further. Quality journalism is diminishing by day.

In bad economic times like this, the immigrants are always the first ones to be targeted. It has always been the case, and it will never change.

 

[Antman]

From what you have described, it would seem that the problem is people carrying out illegal activities rather than the system allowing foreign nationals to freely receive NHS treatment. A problem for law enforcement than immigration. Completely different things.

Let's move away from the focus on the Sun or the Daily Fail. It is no longer the tabloids. Many of the broadsheets these days realise that if they don't take a populist approach and jump on the bandwagon, their sales will just dwindle even further. Quality journalism is diminishing by day.

In bad economic times like this, the immigrants are always the first ones to be targeted. It has always been the case, and it will never change.

In answer to your last point, in bad economic times with many people out of work surely the last thing we need is more people coming into the country looking for work?

I've no idea why you and others keep refering to daily papers, as far as I'm concerned they are outdated and the fall in sales suggests many others people think likewise. Up to the minute news is readily available online.

 

[Oswyntail]

In answer to your last point, in bad economic times with many people out of work surely the last thing we need is more people coming into the country looking for work?....

Unless, of course, our unemployed are also willing to look abroad. I haven't seen any figures, and I have no idea how many do move.

 

[transmanche]

I've no idea why you and others keep refering to daily papers, as far as I'm concerned they are outdated and the fall in sales suggests many others people think likewise. Up to the minute news is readily available online.

I've asked before and I'll ask again - so where do you get your news online?

 

[Antman]

I've asked before and I'll ask again - so where do you get your news online?

Obviously from various sites

 

[transmanche]

Obviously from various sites

Such as?

 

[455driver]

I wonder amid all these talks about health tourism and the like, how many on here actually understands what is required in order to get free NHS treatment? It's not as if one can just get a visa and then book himself into a hospital.

Get off a plane, walk into town, "collapse", somebody else calls an ambulance, job done!

 

[Deerfold]

Obviously from various sites

What a bizarre and evasive answer.

 

[Antman]

What a bizarre and evasive answer.

What a bizzare question, I mean where do you get news and other info online? Probably from too many sites to mention like me:roll:

 

[Deerfold]

What a bizzare question, I mean where do you get news and other info online? Probably from too many sites to mention like me:roll:

There's no particular ones you prefer?

I read all sorts of sites for news but I could give you the names of some I read more - often the bbc site (though not uncritically).

 

[bb21]

Get off a plane, walk into town, "collapse", somebody else calls an ambulance, job done!

Doesn't work like that though. There are quite a few pre-requisites to free NHS treatment.

 

[Johnuk123]

Doesn't work like that though. There are quite a few pre-requisites to free NHS treatment.

What exactly are the pre-requisites to someone needing emergency treatment.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

What exactly are the pre-requisites to someone needing emergency treatment.

The fact as soon as your nationality pops up on the hospital computer system, the overseas manager will be down to inform you that you have to pay.

 

[Johnuk123]

The fact as soon as your nationality pops up on the hospital computer system, the overseas manager will be down to inform you that you have to pay.

Even if the person admits to his nationality after destroying any documents are you saying that this person will be refused emergency treatment before payment.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

Even if the person admits to his nationality after destroying any documents are you saying that this person will be refused emergency treatment before payment.

Nobody is refused emergency treatment. People do not have to pay for A&E, MIU or WIC treatment costs. People also do not have to pay to have infectious diseases treated if they are visiting the UK or illegally here to protect our public health. Treatment imposed by a court and family planning services are also free.

Anything else requires payment. Admission to hospital, elective surgery, maternity, stroke care, seeing a GP, rehabilitation, physiotherapy etc etc all requires payment. The charges aren't cheap either. Even a simple blood test could cost you as much as £300.

Obviously many people know the EEC rules, but we also have bilateral health agreements with countries like Russia, Bosnia and Kazakstan.


But this is all missing the wider point. The total cost of health tourism in terms of the total NHS budget is so small that it's barely worth bothering about. But, like I pointed out earlier, it's a nice political tool to get the kind of people who read the Mail on side.

 

[Johnuk123]

Nobody is refused emergency treatment. People do not have to pay for A&E, MIU or WIC treatment costs. People also do not have to pay to have infectious diseases treated if they are visiting the UK or illegally here to protect our public health. Treatment imposed by a court and family planning services are also free.

Anything else requires payment. Admission to hospital, elective surgery, maternity, stroke care, seeing a GP, rehabilitation, physiotherapy etc etc all requires payment. The charges aren't cheap either. Even a simple blood test could cost you as much as £300.

Obviously many people know the EEC rules, but we also have bilateral health agreements with countries like Russia, Bosnia and Kazakstan.


But this is all missing the wider point. The total cost of health tourism in terms of the total NHS budget is so small that it's barely worth bothering about. But, like I pointed out earlier, it's a nice political tool to get the kind of people who read the Mail on side.

So you admit that nobody from anywhere is ever refused emergency hospital treatment.The problem is of course that people are very skilled in faking illness which will appear as an emergency.

http://www.africanspotlight.com/201...arean-flies-3200-miles-from-lagos-to-britain/

Nigerian-born Bimbo Ayelabola, 33, travelled to Britain to give birth to quins at a cost of up to £200,000 to British taxpayers.

Regarding the costs you mention when people simply leave the country as they can't be stopped do you think they send a cheque back.

Above in the link there are people who tried to pay and hospital officials refused to take the money.

As regards your statement that it doesn't matter anyway as it's so small that is absolutely impossible to prove I refer you to the earlier link, if you are calling the good consultant a liar you need to provide indisputable facts.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...billions-Here-readers-tell-THEIR-stories.html

I work in the NHS and one of my jobs is overseas patient billing. Many foreigners rack up debts going into tens of thousands of pounds that quite often get written off, severely impacting our cash flows and other patient care.
Many also provide either false addresses or the address of where they are temporarily staying, and we have no way of checking what is fact and what is fiction.
I and many of my co-workers have tried petitioning to have overseas visitors pay up front — but to no avail. We are told by the NHS it is ‘unethical’ to refuse treatment, whether emergency or elective.
As far as I’m concerned, you should not be entitled to free NHS care unless you have lived and worked here for a number of years. If you are from overseas — unless you are on the brink of death — you should be refused treatment until you pay a deposit up front and provide proof of your address in your homeland.
READING

I am a receptionist in a hospital maternity unit where half the patients can’t even speak English but say they’re students here. What university is there where you can do a course without a word of English?
Also we have ladies turn up who are about to deliver, having just come into the country. How did they even get on the plane? They get free maternity care, and the cost of an interpreter is not cheap but is paid out of the NHS budget.
I’ve worked since I was 16 (I’m 37) and paid my taxes. Yet I go to the dentist and have to pay £40 for a filling. Where are my human rights when it comes to being understood in my place of work when I’m trying to explain in English about an appointment?!
BIRMINGHAM



I worked in an NHS hospital and saw many instances of this abuse. One man from India had an appointment booked at our hospital before he even arrived in Britain (because he had a daughter who was an NHS doctor).
A woman flew in from Nigeria who booked and paid for a private consultation for her son, and after this declared she had no money to pay for his treatment and requested to be transferred to the NHS (this was agreed as doctors said he wouldn’t get the same treatment in Nigeria).
A woman from New Zealand came over to Britain for treatment for her son because she had relatives here (she also brought her three other children and was given a council house and benefits).
These are just a few of the many examples. They made me angry because at the same time, eligible NHS patients were being refused life-saving drugs due to cost.
LONDON
Many people were NHS workers or patients who say they have seen first-hand abuse of the institution

I fly frequently from the United Arab Emirates to Manchester on Qatar Airlines. Every Wednesday and Thursday these flights are known locally as the MRI Flights (Manchester Royal Infirmary) and are full of passengers seeking medical attention in the UK. Other Gulf States offer discount prices to Doha Airport to catch the Qatar flights.
These MRI flights have been going on for 12 years that I know of.
PRESTON, LANCS
I reported to the UK Border Agency that 14 Filipino people had been using my London address and had registered themselves as residents with my local GP in 2008.
We only discovered this health tourism and benefit fraud by accident when my doctor did an audit and asked me how many bedrooms my flat actually had (it has two).
The UKBA said they had a three-year backlog of cases to investigate. On one occasion, a Filipino woman actually turned up at my home, straight from Heathrow, by mistake. She had paid an agent $5,000 in Manila to come to the UK, where he’d promised her accommodation, treatment for her kidney problem and employment.
We reported this, too. To my certain knowledge, the woman is still in London, working as a cleaner for a peer of the realm. There are thousands of over-stayers and fraudsters here from abroad. Nothing is being done because it is out of control.
LONDON
For many years I lived in Canada and only travelled to the UK occasionally to visit my elderly parents. Twice I needed hospital treatment, and on both occasions told the receptionist I was fully covered by private healthcare, and how did they want me to pay?
On both occasions I was told that ‘there was no mechanism’ for me to pay (or they weren’t interested in finding out how such a ‘mechanism’ worked), and that my treatment, therefore, would be free. The same thing happened here when I was later based in the Middle East.
So even when visitors are prepared to pay, the NHS isn’t interested in collecting the fee.
A payment mechanism should be in place — and no visitors to the UK should be allowed to board an aircraft or ferry without providing proof of health-care insurance.
SOMERSET
My wife works in a hospital ante-natal department. Every day she sees women from abroad coming in just to have babies. The NHS needs to be linked to residency. It is not the International Health Service.
BIRMINGHAM
My wife and I left the UK in 2004. At that time, my wife was a matron- grade nurse working in community health. She told me that new patients were coming in for Aids treatment, who were all fresh-off-the-boat immigrants or health tourists. Each new case cost approximately £100,000 per year to treat.
People were coming in by the dozen weekly to just one clinic. She was told not to refuse anybody. It is such a shame.
PERTH, AUSTRALIA
One frequent flyer to the United Arab Emirates said two days a week the flights are known as the MRI Flights (Manchester Royal Infirmary)

In the GP surgery where I work, there are hundreds of patients who we’re sure are only here temporarily for six months — mainly from Nigeria. They are registered and treated while they are here, then we don’t see them again and we are powerless to do anything.
Can you imagine how much this is costing the taxpayer! Can you imagine how infuriating this is day in day out?
I actually don’t blame the individuals, because the system allows these abuses to go on. We need tighter controls on registrations with GPs, because this is where the abuse of the NHS starts.
MANCHESTER

My wife works in the oncology department of a large hospital, and we are treating hundreds of people from abroad with cancer. We cannot afford it. The NHS will die if whoever is in charge does not stop this.
UNITED KINGDOM
To anyone who works or has worked in the NHS, this is not news. We used to have patients flying in for the day to get treatment at the clinic I worked at as long ago as 1989.
They used to shout at me to hurry up as they had a plane to catch to go home.
BEDFORDSHIRE
I used to work at a language school and we received students from Thailand, Korea and Arab countries who were pregnant and had ante-natal care and births at our local NHS hospital then flew home.
Quite a few of our students were wise to the fact that it was easier to go to A&E with a headache, sore throat, stomach ache or whatever, than to sign on to the local GP’s register. Some even called an ambulance to take them to casualty.
BOURNEMOUTH

Many NHS workers said the abuse of the system had been going on since 1989

When my first child was due to be born at Harlow hospital in Essex, I couldn’t get a bed because non-English patients were taking up all the beds in the maternity wing.
I’m guessing that most were from former French-African colonies, as they were speaking French.
I was told by a manager that they fly into Stansted and demand to be taken to the nearest hospital, which is Harlow.
I finally got a bed 24 hours after being induced (which apparently is dangerous due to the infection risk).
WARE, HERTS
A Korean contractor’s Chinese employee was taken ill in Stockport, and had two weeks’ treatment in the local NHS hospital. When the contractor produced his chequebook and asked to pay the bill, he was told it didn’t matter — and that the treatment would be free because the accounts office was closed for the evening.
When he offered to return the next day, he was told it would be too much trouble, and to forget it. Who was in the wrong?
WARRINGTON, CHESHIRE
One of my wife’s colleagues from India was visited by his pregnant cousin, who told an NHS doctor she had fallen downstairs in order to get an ultrasound scan. She stayed on to give birth before going back to India. Even Cypriots use their children’s addresses (in the UK) to get knee and hip replacements.
One complained when her operation was rescheduled, as she had to buy another return flight ticket.
Paphos, Cyprus

Don't even try and say because it's the Mail it's all made up.

 

[ainsworth74]

So you admit that nobody from anywhere is ever refused emergency hospital treatment.

I take it therefore that you'd prefer that the NHS allow people from other countries to die if they need emergency treatment and don't have a credit card to hand? Note the word emergency that could mean they've been involved in a car crash and rather than they've wandered over here to try and get free treatment.

 

[Johnuk123]

I take it therefore that you'd prefer that the NHS allow people from other countries to die if they need emergency treatment and don't have a credit card to hand? Note the word emergency that could mean they've been involved in a car crash and rather than they've wandered over here to try and get free treatment.

No not at all, if it's a genuine emergency that's fine as they are going to be so small as to be insignificant.

But they should still forfeit their passport till they've paid, of course if they then simply vanish into this country that's another thread.

My main point is more about how it's quite possible to walk off a plane and get any treatment for absolutely free.

 

[Deerfold]

My main point is more about how it's quite possible to walk off a plane and get any treatment for absolutely free.

And the current rules say that shouldn't happen. If it is happening then they need to look at why as intoducing new rules is unlikely to be effective.

I don't read things more easily when they're bigger, by the way (once they've at a legible size).

 

[Johnuk123]

And the current rules say that shouldn't happen. If it is happening then they need to look at why as intoducing new rules is unlikely to be effective.

I agree it shouldn't happen but at the moment it is.

As I have said before we need an NHS passport to stop this type of thing.

We as a country are totally out of step with the rest of the world regarding helathcare we're always going to be a magnet.

You can't blame anybody coming here to get free treatment, if we had to pay and other countries were free it would be in reverse.

 

[Deerfold]

As I have said before we need an NHS passport to stop this type of thing.

A what?

How much is that going to cost to implement?

 

[Johnuk123]

A what?

How much is that going to cost to implement?

Been trailed many times and I agree we don't have a good track record in these type of things.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

A what?

How much is that going to cost to implement?

Probably more than health tourism!


And do I think the consultant is lying? No, but various sources from Jeremy Hunt to the Times and even the Mail on Sunday disagree with him. I wouldn't trust a Consultant with finance any more than I would trust an accountant to diagnose. Just because someone is a consultant doesn't make them right.

I'm also not sure why you felt the need to make your quotes massive and bold. Doing that doesn't make you any more right than you might think you are. I note a lot of the stories are a friend of a friend, and some even bear a striking resemblance to many urban myths.

And faking illnesses to trick a medical professional into thinking they are an emergency? Don't embarrass yourself with such rubbish. If they are faking the illness then they don't need the treatment which makes the entire concept of coming to the UK for treatment pointless!

I also don't "admit" that people get emergency treatment for free. Of course they do, and that isn't a problem. To "admit" something implies I denied it in the first place which is utterly false. I'm quite used to the treatment the NHS provides in an emergency, funnily enough.

 

[Johnuk123]

Probably more than health tourism!


And do I think the consultant is lying? No, but various sources from Jeremy Hunt to the Times and even the Mail on Sunday disagree with him. I wouldn't trust a Consultant with finance any more than I would trust an accountant to diagnose. Just because someone is a consultant doesn't make them right.

I'm also not sure why you felt the need to make your quotes massive and bold. Doing that doesn't make you any more right than you might think you are. I note a lot of the stories are a friend of a friend, and some even bear a striking resemblance to many urban myths.

And faking illnesses to trick a medical professional into thinking they are an emergency? Don't embarrass yourself with such rubbish. If they are faking the illness then they don't need the treatment which makes the entire concept of coming to the UK for treatment pointless!

I also don't "admit" that people get emergency treatment for free. Of course they do, and that isn't a problem. To "admit" something implies I denied it in the first place which is utterly false. I'm quite used to the treatment the NHS provides in an emergency, funnily enough.

I knew it, it's all made up because it's in the Mail.

I'm glad you admit the consultant isn't lying.

To say things must be true because a Govt. minister says so, well that's probably the first time in history then.

Remember the Govt. minister John Reid saying that a shot might not be fired in Afghanistan, he was spot on wasn't he.

Remember how only 13,000 immigrants a year were going to come here after 2004 when Labour threw open the doors, another cracking Govt. lie.

You go on believing what you want and so will I.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

I knew it, it's all made up because it's in the Mail.

They are republishing comments made on their articles. Aside from being lazy journalism, there's no way to verify them.

I'm glad you admit the consultant isn't lying.

No, he's probably not lying. That implies he is doing it deliberately. But the evidence shows he is mistaken. His expertise is in the treatment of cancer, not finance.

To say things must be true because a Govt. minister says so, well that's probably the first time in history then.

Ah, the point whooshes over your head like Concorde. It's not just Jeremy Hunt. The Times say the same, and even your worshipped paper said the same!

I note you have failed to respond to the majority of my post.

 

[bb21]

So you admit that nobody from anywhere is ever refused emergency hospital treatment.The problem is of course that people are very skilled in faking illness which will appear as an emergency.

And your proposed solution is?

For argument's sake, say some people are very good at faking an emergency, surely the way forward is to train medical professionals so that they are better at spotting these fakes than refusing people treatment outright, if that is at all possible.

But they should still forfeit their passport till they've paid, of course if they then simply vanish into this country that's another thread.

And if they refuse to forfeit their passport? What if they have no passport? Are you going to refuse them genuine emergency treatment?

As I have said before we need an NHS passport to stop this type of thing.

It's called an NHS number. You need this to register at surgeries, and you cannot get this or hospital treatment for anything other than emergencies unless you provide sufficient proof of ID. Perhaps your focus should be on better administration of NHS numbers if the process is being abused, rather than targeting people who genuinely need help.

 

[transmanche]

Perhaps your focus should be on better administration of NHS numbers if the process is being abused, rather than targeting people who genuinely need help.

It's amazing how what is in reality is a 'grumble about poor administration of NHS numbers' can be turned into yet another platform to have a go at immigrants.

I wonder if the same people who are now foaming at the mouth at 'health tourism' are the same people who a couple of years ago were clamouring for the NHS to get rid of all the administrators... y'know, the people who could stop it!