The government has plans for us. If it thinks a pilot scheme in Peterborough, Stamford and St George’s Hospital in Tooting is successful it may be rolled out across the country, and coming to a health centre near you.

Will that be good? No.

If the scheme gets the go-ahead, we won’t just have to show our passports when we go abroad and come back. We’ll have to show them before we go into hospital for operations. No passport, no operation; no ID, no treatment. Go home and wait to die.

The Guardian explains: “Patients could be told to bring two forms of identification including a passport to hospital to prove they are eligible for free treatment under new rules to stop so-called health tourism.”

Why?

Well, apparently, “the government paid out £674m to other European countries for the treatment of Britons abroad, but received only £49m in return for the NHS treatment of European citizens.”

Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health (the Department’s “Sir Humphrey”) explained his thinking to the Commons Public Accounts Committee today and told MPs that the results so far are encouraging:

“Individual trusts like Peterborough are doing that and it is making a big difference – they are saying please come with two forms of identity, your passport and your address, and they use that to check whether people are eligible.”

He realised that such a practice might be criticised but then confirmed that, like Credit, it would be Universal: “It is quite a controversial thing to do, to say to the entire population you’ve got to prove your identity.”

No decision has yet been made, of course. It’s not clear whether Chris just blurted out this information under pressure from the committee (some members of these committees can be quite pushy once they’ve got the bit between their teeth) or whether he was floating the idea to test the water.

Well, I’ll tell you what I intend to do. If the scheme comes in, and I’m asked for my passport, I will refuse to produce it, or any other proof of my identity. And I’ll see what they do. That’ll be me testing the water, like Chris.

Listen, I’m 74, and, so far, healthy. A nurse at my medical centre, explaining why they stop automatic over-60s medical checks at 74 (I’m due for my last one) said, “Well, the checks are preventative – but when you reach about 90 there’s not much we can prevent!” Point taken, although that still makes 74 a bit early, but I’ll let that pass. However, at some point or other I’m likely to need some of the “passport-required-before-access” treatment they’re talking about. But I was born half a dozen years before Nye Bevan’s great struggle with the doctors to create the NHS, free at the point of use, no questions asked, no passports required, and I started benefiting from it immediately. I’m buggered if I’m going to provide ID to get hospital treatment at this late stage. It’s against my principles.

So is the suggestion by “a source close to the Health Secretary”, Jeremy Hunt: the scheme “might only be applied in areas with shifting populations and large influxes of immigrants.”

That’s called racism, Secretary of State. But what more can we expect?

Here’s the Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/21/hospitals-may-require-patients-to-show-passports-for-nhs-treatment?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=200816&subid=12991040&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2