Saturday, March 10, 2018

A National Health Service Restricted to "Nationals"

When "Albert Thompson" went for his first radiotherapy session for prostate cancer in November he says he was surprised to be taken aside by a hospital administrator and told that unless he could produce a British passport he would be charged £54,000 for the treatment.
Thompson has lived in London for 44 years, having arrived from Jamaica as a teenager, and although he has worked as a mechanic and paid taxes for more than three decades, the Home Office is disputing his eligibility to remain. Official suspicion about his immigration status led to him being evicted last summer, and he was homeless for three weeks. His problems with the Home Office became acute last July when he was evicted from council-owned accommodation because officials questioned whether he was eligible. The Home Office said it could find no record of him in its files and he was forced to sleep on the streets, until the homelessness charity St Mungo’shoused him. His disputed status has also led to free healthcare being denied. Because he has no savings and no way of paying £54,000, he says he is not receiving the cancer treatment he needs.
Thompson’s mother moved from Jamaica to the UK in the 1960s to work as a nurse, dedicating much of her working life to the health system. He married in Britain, and has two grown up sons and a 15-year-old daughter. Thompson was employed full time as a mechanic and later did MOT work, until 2008 when he was diagnosed with the blood cancer lymphoma; since then he has been too ill to work.
He had surgery for prostate cancer in January last year and was to begin a course of radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden hospital last November. But when he turned up for the appointment he was ushered into a side room by a member of staff for a discussion about eligibility and costs. “I was expecting to get the treatment, but they gave me a form requesting a British passport, so that was the end of that,” he said. Thompson has never had a British passport, and was not aware he needed one. The Jamaican passport he arrived with was lost many years ago. “The lady wasn’t at all polite. She said you have to produce it or pay £54,000. I said: ‘Oh my god, I don’t have 54 pence, let alone £54,000.’ I told her I’d been here all my life but it made no difference.” 
The Royal Marsden hospital have confirmed that is the cost of the treatment Thompson needs.  A letter from the hospital stated unless Thompson could provide documents to prove that he was “ordinarily resident and legally entitled to live in the UK”, he would be required to pay for treatment “in full, in advance”. A spokesperson for the Royal Marsden said: “Each NHS Trust in England is legally responsible for identifying and charging overseas visitors using NHS services where the patient cannot prove that they are ordinarily resident and legally entitled to live in the UK. In line with Department of Health guidance, from 23 October 2017 the Royal Marsden is now legally required to charge non-eligible patients in advance of any treatment.”
His lawyer, Jeremy Bloom, said, “The Home Office routinely fails to recognise people’s permission to be here, regardless of whether a person has been living in the UK, registered with numerous other government departments, paying taxes and contributing to society for decades,” he said. “This case is particularly serious because of his urgent health needs, and the time that it will take for him to regularise his status here through making the appropriate immigration application. Meanwhile, he is being denied potentially life-saving treatment.”
Thompson’s situation is not unique. The migration charity Praxis, based in east London has seen a sharp rise in cases involving retirement-age Commonwealth citizens who have lived continuously in the UK for about 50 years, but are facing questions about their immigration status, resulting in evictions, refusal of benefits and dismissal from work. 
“The numbers are galloping up – these are people who have paid taxes and contributed all their adult lives who are suddenly being stopped and asked: on what basis are you here?” said Bethan Lant of a Praxis. “Their only crime is that they have not filled in a form from the Home Office.”

1 comment:

Tim Hart said...

My general reaction to the exclusion of people from such essential life saving treatment is that it amounts to rampant nationalism bordering on Fascism. At a more specific level it would be interesting to see a break down of this so called £54,000 cost to ascertain how such an astronomical charge is warranted. I suspect the direct cost of the treatment is only a small amount of the overall total.