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Express
July 16, 2014
MIGRANTS who travel to Britain from outside Europe for NHS treatment will be charged 150 per cent of the cost in a new crackdown on welfare tourism to be unveiled by ministers today.
Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said new rules on charging foreign visitors would provide hospital bosses with an incentive to chase payments.
The new measures could help claw back up to £500million spent by the NHS on treating foreigners.
Mr Hunt will announce that NHS trusts must take the personal details of foreign patients so they can be traced and made to pay.
The hospital will get 75 per cent of the cost of the treatment up-front and the same amount again when the patient pays the bill. Hospital trusts that fail to identify and bill chargeable patients will be fined.
There are an estimated 260,000 non-European foreigners in England who have legal access to NHS services.
Under existing rules visitors from outside Europe are supposed to pay for hospital treatment but the Government says only a fraction of charges are collected because hospitals mask how many foreign nationals they are treating to avoid chasing payments.
But the new rules will mean, for example, non-Europeans undergoing cataract surgery, which costs the NHS £1,867, will pay £2,800.
A non-European coming to the UK for a hip replacement will be charged £12,865 rather than the NHS tariff of £8,577. The measures follow a series of initiatives by ministers seeking to stop migrants milking the welfare state.
