Health Secretary Hunt has again raised the spectre of health tourism in order to deflect attention from the real source of trouble for the English NHS, namely insufficient funding for key areas. I trust that Vaughan Gething will resist taking Wales down the same route. In spite of xenophobic headlines, the amount spent on treating foreign patients (many from countries with whom we have reciprocal arrangements anyway) is minuscule compared with the overall health budget. As a former bureaucrat, I sense that the cost of administering the proposed cost recovery system is going to outweigh the amount "saved".
Caron Lindsay and Tim Farron have something to say on the subject.
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