01 August 2003
Health minister John Hutton has indicated that the success of a new scheme to prevent costly 'health tourism' and fraud across the NHS could depend heavily on the government's controversial plans for national identity cards.
Hutton believes that the drive to tighten up NHS rules for treating overseas visitors would be made much easier by a national ID card scheme, currently being considered by Home Secretary David Blunkett.
The Department of Health announced on July 29 that all NHS patients will in future be asked to provide evidence of their UK residency status and qualification for free care before receiving routine treatment.
Hutton revealed it could mean patients being asked to produce a passport or utility bill on entering hospital for all treatments outside of accident and emergency wards.
The move aims to curb the rising level of 'health tourism', whereby short-term visitors to the UK and failed asylum seekers receive health service treatments for free. NHS trusts already facing financial constraints have complained that many ineligible patients flee the UK having not paid for treatments.
St George's Healthcare NHS Trust in London, for example, said its maternity units alone deal with 'several' cases per month where the pregnant spouses of visitors on short-term stays in the UK enter the country to give birth – at a cost of £1,500 a time to the NHS.
Hutton said the proposals 'aim to ensure that the NHS is first and foremost for the benefit of those living in the UK'.
But he acknowledged that the initiative will force additional administrative responsibilities on frontline NHS staff and that stringent enforcement of the new checks will be difficult. 'It is a difficult thing to do and ID cards would make it easier,' he claimed.
The British Medical Association, however, dismissed the scheme, saying it was 'not the role of doctors to be agents of the state and check eligibility for health care'.
Political opponents and asylum seeker support groups were also scathing.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Evan Harris said the policy was merely an attempt by the government to divert attention for a failing health service on to asylum seekers and foreigners.
But the Conservatives said the measures did not go far enough, claiming 'hundreds of thousands' of illegal asylum seekers were manipulating the NHS system without having contributed to it.
PFaug2003
