What about UK retirees living in France, that are still paying income taxe in the UK on their pension, being paying taxe and N.I contribution all their life in the UK ? Isn’t that normal they have some support and benefit ? I know one of them quite well !
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It’s a UK problem. As Babeth has pointed out most of the S1 holding OAPs are entitled to have their health care funded by the U.K. having paid a lifetime of NI payments (and many still being UK taxpayers) and the NHS not having a system in place to make paying for care received straightforward.
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The aim of the FOI question was to expose the huge difference in payments between what the Europeans pay for their healthcare in the UK compared with what the NHS has to pay Europe for looking after UK citizens abroad.
There is also the question of unequal treatment. UK pensioners often find it difficult to get the treatment they need whilst UK pensioners in France get a much better service.
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I have to say that we have to pay for a “mutuelle” here to have a better service. And I think it worth it !
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If the problem is the NHS, David Martin, then things will have to change. Change is slow and difficult (the outcry when a Jamaican was refused treatment) but they are changing:
Migrants, visitors and former residents of the UK must pay for their care when they’re in England. In April 2015, changes were made to the way the NHS charges overseas visitors for healthcare. This is so that the NHS does not lose out on income for services these people receive.
So, here’s a useful graphic to illuminate the discussion:
Source: Office for National Statistics
Bars are French in the UK and lines are Brits in France - look at the position of the peaks. The French in the UK are in their mid 20’s to mid 40’s - a group which consumes hardly any healthcare at all except for obstetric services perhaps.
On the contrary Brits in France peak in their mid 60’s and massively outnumber the French in the UK in every age group above mid 40’s - this is a group who are likely to consume a fair bit of expensive healthcare such as joint replacements and cancer care.
There’s also the fact that healthcare costs are different in the two countries - look at this graph comparing the cost of cancer drugs in various EU countries.
Source: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2011/451481/IPOL-ENVI_ET(2011)451481_EN.pdf
As you can see these drugs can be significantly more expensive in France than in the UK so that will drive the overall cost of care up - so even if the population demographics were the same and the healthcare delivered the same there would still be a discrepancy in charges.
@Babeth make a valid point as well, it is likely that the UK gets tax revenue fro Brits living in France and it is certain that if they were living in the UK the NHS would be picking up the tab for their healthcare.
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Yes Babeth - I had a mutuelle too and it was worth it since it was paid for by the company I worked for
Perhaps you need to start campaigning for the NHS to improve their system for charging non UK residents.
You cannot claim that it’s unfair that U.K. OAPs are getting better treatment than those in the UK because the UK itself us a postcode lottery when it comes to provision and although France is considered to have a better health system and therefore those who use it profit other countries on your list are less well provided for and the UK citizens living in those places lose out.
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Unfortunately Mr Mann asked the wrong questions - it does not matter one jot that there is a discrepancy, what he needed to know was whether the NHS is recovering the costs for treatment of EU citizens in the UK from their home nations - the cost of treating UK citizens in the EU and whether host nations recover this cost from the NHS is a different question and you can’t assume that if Brits in France “spent” £150 million on healthcare that the French living in the UK “cost” the NHS the same amount.
So the intelligent ones move to France.
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Paul Flinders - I think you are right on both counts. There must be an awful lot of intelligent pensioners. And it is not the first time the Labour Party has asked the wrong question
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Mine is half paid by the company (compulsory now), for Bill we pay the full bill, even it’s cheaper because that’s a “mutuelle de groupe”. I just had a look about what they paid back in the last two years, and the amount is 1816.31€, not even included the hip job that was taken 100% by CPAM. Social Solidarity is the base of our system. We are not expected to compare what’s somebody else is paying. Imagine a world where people with cancer have to pay more than the one that are “healthy”, like an insurance “bonus”. Worth, if you had people who died from a genetical desease in your familly, so you could have a “malus”.
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And by the way, I pay CSG on the half of my Top Up paid by my employer, and income taxe too. So it’s far from being a great gift
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FWIW Mann is probably right - it’s just that he used the wrong numbers to come up with the wrong answer. Conveniently that is a bigger number than reality. It’s also not exactly news.
I found the topic, including Mann’s figures discussed on FullFact.org - not sure how reliable this site is but it seems a sensible discussion.
Of note an impact assessment is linked which puts the cost of providing healthcare to EU workers around £340million (dwarfed by £1,070 million for non-EEA citizens) of which about £240 million is recoverable.
Also interesting is the suggestion that NHS trusts find it much simpler to bill the activity through the normal UK channels rather than incur the extra admin of chasing the EU for the money.
Finally I have been struggling to see the point that he is making - he is a Brexiteer so I presume this is supposed to be a “look how the EU is dragging us down” thing but really it just reveals the incompetence of the NHS - and by extension the UK government.
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It just follows the trend of displaying numbers hoping that Joe Public will jump to the wrong conclusion. Remember the bus?
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Oh yes.
Amusingly it is estimated that the loss of GDP caused currently by the shambles that is Brexit is about £350 million a week.
Couldn’t make it up.
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It is true that the Labour Party gets things spectacularly wrong and politicians of all types are likely to try to use fake news.
There are similarities between the UK system and the European systems. In the UK I had to pay tax on the private healthcare provided by my employer and National Insurance contributions (similar to the deductions in France). However the problem lies firmly with the NHS because they have no experience of charging for care because most things are free.
Well, NHS trusts are pretty experienced at charging for care - it’s just that they don’t charge the public but rather their commissioning groups (who hold the purse strings).
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What exactly is the point of your OP? Is it an anti Labour post? If the figures mean anything shouldn’t the Conservative party be held to account!
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It’s not so much fake news - more the lie with a grain of truth.
But like much Brexiteer propaganda the scale and, more importantly, cause of the problem are not as stated.
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The fact that the NHS pays out £674 millions in healthcare for UK citizens abroad each year but only receives £49 million in return has been highlighted by a Labour MP and needs further investigation.
Unfortunately the real question he should have asked is “Is the NHS recovering the costs for treatment of EU citizens in the UK?”
If John Mann had asked the right question, he might have embarrassed the conservative government into action.