End the international abuse of our NHS

BARELY a month goes by without ministers unveiling a crackdown on health tourism but, as we reveal today, the system remains wide open to rampant abuse.

Our shocking undercover investigation centres on so-called EHIC cards, which are intended for British citizens to use to obtain free emergency healthcare when they are travelling in the EU. The NHS has spent more than £721million reimbursing other European countries for treating people with EHIC cards over the past five years.

But, far from checking they are given only to British citizens or people who have at least paid tax in the UK, they are being handed out like confetti.

All a migrant needs to do to obtain a card is fly over for the day, visit a GP surgery – which will treat anybody – and get an NHS number.

Once they have this, the card is readily handed over – and the recipient is free to obtain healthcare anywhere in the EU, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Eastern Europeans have been particularly quick to exploit the loophole, which allows them to obtain maternity care at home which would normally require expensive health insurance.

Indeed, clinic staff in Hungary say ‘more and more’ women are now taking advantage of the ruse, which is also being encouraged on online forums in Romania, Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Last night the Department of Health said such abuse of the NHS was ‘completely unacceptable’. In which case, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt must urgently change the rules to stop it.

To continue paying for foreign nationals to have free maternity care overseas, at a time when the NHS is so short of funds at home that treatments are being axed from the life-prolonging Cancer Drugs Fund, is simply unforgivable.