BMA: Give Free Healthcare to Migrants

Health tourism is believed to cost British taxpayers between £200 million and £2 billion every year, but try telling that to the liberal luvies at the British Medical Association.

An overwhelming majority of delegates at the annual conference of the British Medical Association, a union which represents 155,000 doctors, called for the abolition of all charges by migrants to use the NHS, which would effectively turn the National Health Service into the International Health Service.

Currently, foreign visitors who are not EU citizens are expected to pay to use the British taxpayer-funded medical service, for all but non-urgent treatment. EU citizens can receive free treatment as long as they have a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC).

The regulations were brought about in 2017, with hospitals being made responsible for charging foreign service users in order to stop “health tourism”, after a number of highly-publicised reports of foreigners racking up high medical bills — in once case in excess of half a million pounds — without paying.

Dr Duried Syad Ali, who opposed the motion, warned that “Accepting this motion is sending the wrong message to the world, inviting everyone to free health care.”

According to the Daily Mail, doctors who opposed lifting the regulations that safeguard Britons’ and legal migrants’ use of the NHS were allegedly booed, whilst one doctor, Dr Omar Risk, claimed that “Charging migrants for accessing NHS services is a fundamentally racist endeavour – we are complicit in the oppressive regime.”

The BMA will soon begin pressuring the government to scrap the rules entirely.