NHS foots £2million bill for hundreds of European workers to give birth in their home countries due to EU rules
British taxpayers are footing a £2million bill for hundreds of European workers to go home and give birth in their native countries.
Under EU rules set up to provide emergency healthcare between member states, foreign hospitals can bill the NHS for treating their own citizens – as long as patients have established residency in the UK and filled out a simple form.
Last year, the Health Service paid for 1,342 cases of treatment in European Economic Area countries or Switzerland.
Anyone who comes to Britain to work can fill in an S2 or E112 form entitling them to free treatment in other member states and Switzerland. The same applies to British citizens living in another European country [File photo]
Some 1,241 of them – or more than 90 per cent – related to maternity care, and 653 – or almost half – came from Poland, according to figures obtained by the Mail under freedom of information laws.
The average birth costs the NHS £1,600, meaning the total cost of treating pregnant women in EU hospitals amounted to £2million last year.
Anyone who comes to Britain to work can fill in an S2 or E112 form entitling them to free treatment in other member states and Switzerland.
The same applies to British citizens living in another European country.
Many of last year’s claims came from former Iron Curtain nations, but others with high totals included France (108), Spain (84), Slovakia (70) and Italy (64).
An NHS insider said: ‘It may be they prefer the familiar surroundings of home and the support of family and friends.’
Some 1,241 of them – or more than 90 per cent – related to maternity care, and 653 – or almost half – came from Poland, according to figures obtained by the Mail under freedom of information laws [File photo]
The number of claims received last year is four times the number it was in 2005.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘We can’t afford to be the International Health Service. It’s vulnerable to exploitation.’
Health tourism is thought to cost anything from £200million to £2billion a year.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘We recover millions from EU countries. Every UK national has the same right if they are living abroad.’
The Mail reported yesterday how the British Medical Association’s annual conference had voted to stop billing foreign patients for care on the NHS, claiming it made doctors ‘complicit in racism’.
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