With taxpayers £6billion out of pocket it’s time to send the health tourists packing and scrap £200 visa, says top medic J. Meirion Thomas

GRACING the front page of The Sun yesterday was yet another health tourist paid for by YOU.

Nigerian national Priscilla had come to the UK to give birth to her quads after being warned by a doctor in her own country that she should not have them there.

She was refused entry to America after landing near ­Chicago where she planned to have the babies, so boarded another plane to London where she gave birth at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.

There she racked up a staggering £331,000 bill for the birth and care of her babies, which she has no way of paying.

But Priscilla’s case is not a one-off.

Figures show health tourists — those who come to the UK with pre-existing medical conditions just to use the NHS — have cost taxpayers nearly £6BILLION in the past eight years.

The number of babies born to mothers not eligible for free NHS treatment has doubled in two years, to more than 2,100.

And these costs are barely being recouped.

A report by the National Audit Office last year found that eight trusts failed to collect payment from overseas patients who received free treatment they were not entitled to.

But why should hard-working British people pay for the healthcare of residents from other countries who have never contributed to our system?

And why does it happen again and again?

It partly comes down to the badly designed and utterly useless migrant and student visa surcharge, now known as the health surcharge, which is possibly one of the most ill-conceived pieces of legislation enacted by the Coalition government.

It is the cheapest travel insurance on the planet.

Every non-European migrant or student applying for a UK visa for more than six months must pay the health surcharge at the time of application.

The charge is per family member and per year and is set at £200 for migrants and £150 for students.

It does not apply to visitors or those with “indefinite leave to remain”.

After payment, the migrant or student and their dependants are fully entitled to free NHS care.

To signify payment, a “green banner” appears on their computerised NHS record, which guarantees unlimited treatment, even for pre-existing illnesses, for as long as the visa is valid.

Compare this to the cost of travel insurance that British visitors, migrants or students are actively encouraged to purchase when travelling outside the EU, which covers only emergency care and excludes pre-existing illnesses.

Compare, also, with the mandatory 30,000 euro (£25,500) health insurance Schengen visa requirement for a non-European to enter any other EU country apart from the UK and Ireland.

Pre-existing conditions require additional insurance.

The Department of Health says the health surcharge had raised £175.6million in the six months since its introduction in April 2015.

You might think that’s a good thing — but think again.

Although £450,000 immigration health surcharge visas were issued in the first year of its existence, we have absolutely no way of knowing the cost incurred to the NHS by those visa holders.

It is a godsend to health tourists — who are defined as people who travel to the UK with a pre-existing illness in order to access free NHS care.

The surcharge was introduced to offset the cost of health tourism because it was known that, even when tourists were identified and charged, only 16 per cent of invoices raised were ever paid.

But the unintended consequence has been to encourage widespread health tourism at minimal cost. Why was this not foreseen?

Stats revealed in October showed the Government was expected to fall short of its £500million target of recovered cash from oversees patients.

The target has since been reduced to £346million for the 2017-18 financial year.

But it sounds like this figure has been plucked out of the air.

Unfortunately, the total cost incurred by green-bannered patients will not be known for the foreseeable future because the recording processes within hospitals and trusts are not fully in place.

It is the responsibility of an “overseas visitors manager” (OVM) to collect this information and many hospitals either have no OVM or an inadequate number to record the necessary data.

A reliable source in one trust alone has recorded more than 40 green-bannered patients accessing treatment in the same six months as the £100million was collected.

The patients came from a wide spectrum of non-EU countries and for treatment of a variety of conditions including infertility, orthopaedic, gynaecological and ophthalmological.

From that hospital and another known to me, the dominant presenting condition was pregnancy.

Given the timeframe, it is unlikely, or impossible, that these patients didn’t know they were pregnant when they paid the health surcharge.

Let’s assume that some or all of the other 153 acute trusts in England are similarly affected, then do a hypothetical calculation limited only to maternity tourism.

The cost to the NHS of an uncomplicated vaginal delivery is £5,000 — doubled when a Caesarean section is required.

If the newborn baby needs admission to a Special Care Baby Unit, then the costs escalate hugely.

What every OVM knows about maternity tourism is that patients tend to come to the UK for complicated deliveries, such as multiple births, in order to benefit from our excellent obstetric services and to reduce the risks to mother and baby.

This template estimation may be exaggerated or it may be true. Nobody knows.

What is true is that Priscilla, and many more like her, will never pay back what they owe — and her bill has now expected to hit £500,000. Just think about how else that cash could be used.

The migrant and student health visa surcharge is wrong — and must be scrapped immediately.

• Professor J. Meirion Thomas is an NHS campaigner and cancer specialist.