As a doctor, I can see that denying NHS care to immigrants is inhumane

This article was taken from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/12/doctor-nhs-care-government-albert-thompson

By Kitty Worthing

The government’s charging regime risks costing the lives of thousands of people who can’t pay, such as Albert Thompson, who moved here 44 years ago

Last week, the Guardian reported on the case of Albert Thompson, a man who came to London 44 years ago from Jamaica, at a time when many people from Commonwealth countries were migrating to the UK. This includes, of course, the thousands of nurses from Jamaica recruited in response to the NHS staffing crisis of the 1950s and 60s. Thompson’s mother was in fact one of these nurses.

In November 2017, Thompson, suffering from prostate cancer, was told he could not continue to receive treatment unless he paid a staggering £54,000 upfront. Unable to pay, he was denied further care. This comes within the first month of the introduction of upfront payments, one facet of the government’s policy of charging for NHS services provided to people who aren’t “ordinarily resident” – in practice, charges for immigrants. The charging policy was first introduced under Gordon Brown in 2009, and extended in 2014 as part of a series of Conservative-led hostile environment measures. This is why Docs Not Cops – the campaign group I am part of – was set up: to campaign for free healthcare for everyone, whatever their immigration status.

Government guidance makes it a statutory duty for the NHS to charge patients not deemed to be “ordinarily resident” in the UK. This means that patients with precarious immigration status are left with bills of thousands of pounds. Since October last year they can be denied care if they are unable to pay upfront, as Thompson was. If patients are unable to pay, the Department of Health effectively punishes them by handing their personal information to the Home Office, where their inability to pay for healthcare may mean their immigration applications are refused.

While this case is particularly shocking given the length of time Thompson has lived in the country, it is sadly not uncommon. Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK decades ago, but whose right to remain does not show in Home Office records, are now being excluded from work, housing and welfare benefits, as well as healthcare, and even held in immigration prisons, as the government’s “hostile environment” for migrants deepens border control across all areas of life.