The Human Truth Foundation

UK Health Tourism
Foreigners are Not Abusing the NHS

http://www.humantruth.info/UK_health_tourism.html

By Vexen Crabtree 2017

#EU #health #UK #uk_health

Many in the UK accuse immigrants and refugees of "health tourism" and "benefits tourism"1. 59% of all Brits think "that foreigners were a burden on the welfare system"2. Right-wing politicians, the occasional rogue (but well-meaning) doctor, and irresponsible newspapers such as The Daily Mail have exclaimed loudly that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) spends £2 billion annually on health tourists, a figure which is absurdly exaggerated. The real figure is £110-180m, which is less than the NHS spends on stationary and is less than is wasted through missed appointments3,4. The £2bn figure includes those in the UK who work and pay taxes here. Also, it is not fair to announce one-way costings; "treating UK tourists in Europe costs five times more than equivalent cost to NHS"5; and imagine if we had to pay the costs of the millions of Brits who have retired in the Mediterranean. When it comes to health tourism, the UK benefits from EU membership greatly5.


1. Accusing Immigrants of Benefit Tourism

#immigration #UK

Many in the UK accuse immigrants and refugees of coming to the UK "to take advantage of a free NHS and to gain access to our benefits"1. Whether or not they believed they were here specifically to get free stuff, 59% of all Brits think (wrongly) "that foreigners were a burden on the welfare system" (only 41 per cent disagree)2. A string of right-wing politicians and disreputable newspapers have exclaimed loudly that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) spends £2 billion annually on visitors, a figure which is absurdly exaggerated.

2. Wrong

#EU #immigration #UK

But everything about those beliefs are wrong. There is strong evidence that most migrants who come to the UK intend to work. The vast majority do work (in fact, at a higher rate than Brits themselves). And the Government's own report (from which xenophobes extracted the £2bn figure) itself states rather very clearly that the amount due to deliberate health tourism is £110-280m annually3. The £2bn figure cited by people who don't seem to have read the actual report, includes foreign nationals who are living and working in the UK (therefore, paying their own way via taxes) - such people make up 3/4 of the £2bn figure6. And of the overall costs of overseas of services, the UK gets back about £100m from visitors' home countries3 in cases where they aren't paying tax, in accordance with our international and EU agreements4. It could claim back much, much more, but the UK is simply not very good at doing so5 and this has been made more difficult as the UK abandoned its identity-card scheme, the NHS has no way to track who should be paying for services.

Health tourism is only 0.3% of the NHS budget

Writing for The Mirror newspaper, political analyst Mikey Smith presents the relative costs to the NHS in a pie chart, adding a comment that total expenditure on health tourists is 0.3% of the total budget, and that "the NHS spends around £200m more every year on stationery than it does on health tourism [and] missed GP appointments cost around £300m a year"3.

A study by Declan Gaffney demonstrates that after assessing the `net incomes after taxes, benefits and housing costs of low-wage EU migrants shows that, even after factoring in tax credits, EU migrants with two children are no better off in the UK than in other western European countries, while single EU migrants without children are worse off.'

"Britain: Leading, Not Leaving: The Patriotic Case for Remaining in Europe" by Gordon Brown (2016)7

It's not just the UK where health-tourism turns out to be a hollow threat; throughout the rest of the EU the story is the same:

The evidence all points in one direction. `Welfare tourism´, meaning migration from one EU country to another simply in order to access welfare payments of the receiving state, is rare. Differences in benefits entitlements are not an important driver of migration, whereas the prospect of finding work is. Intra-EU migrants are more likely to be in employment than natives and given the generally young age of many intra-EU migrants, they tend to lean less heavily on social and health services than the domestic population. Studies point to intra-EU migrants having a positive fiscal effect for the receiving country.

"The European Union: A Citizen's Guide" by Chris Bickerton (2016)8

3. British Benefits

#brexit #EU #EU_benefits #europe #travel #UK

Brits make 50 million visits to Europe every year9. 1.4 million Brits work, study or have retired abroad in the EU10,11. Throughout the EU they benefit from health cover under the European Health Insurance Card and other schemes4,6.

Despite the advantages, many in the UK engage in awkwardly hypocritical diatribes against EU migration; not just on 'health tourism' but on many other issues.

Janan Ganesh describes the UK as "reluctant Europeans"18,19. The UK has voted "no" to EU proposals more than anyone else since 200920. We dislike learning about the EU, we don't keep up to date on EU news21, the most prolific newspapers on the EU don't have correspondents in Brussels, and the UK is the least educated of all EU nations on the very basic facts about the EU22. We are "marked by misguided assumptions and missed opportunities"19. UK citizens' complaints about the EU are mostly based on misinformation, such as complaints about "health tourism". The UK has suffered from having a dominant right-wing popular press which has served to actively misinform the populace about Europe, and about the EU in particular - the faction led by Rupert Murdoch has been particularly influential23. The eventual result was the UK referendum on 2016 Jun 23 which saw "Brexit" votes narrowly outnumber those of "Remain", leading to the UK withdrawal from the EU.

"The Awkward Europeans: The UK's Relationship With the EU" by Vexen Crabtree (2017)