Appeal courts ruled yesterday that failed asylum seekers with chronic illnesses were not entitled to free health care on the NHS. This undermines years of campaigning work to make sure everybody in the country is treated like a human being.
Sources report that hospitals still have the discretion to provide free treatment to anybody. But this is not news as doctors will always exercise such rights under their oaths. The real problem is not normally at the point of accessing treatment from doctors. Hospitals do not like to just turn people away. The problems come after treatment, when people suddenley receive whopping bills for treatments they had believed would be free.
Hospitals also employ people solely to scan patient's lists for foreign-sounding names and then check up on their legal status, ostensibly searching for "health tourists". Against all anti-discrimination legislation, people are being racially profiled and screened against their nationality. These employees actually patrol the wards in search of anyone they suspect.
We know of one man who was literally pulled out of his bed and had his oxygen mask removed. He was awaiting an operation but he was denied treatment, slung out of hospital and then sent a bill. He has crippled himself in bank loans trying to pay this back, even though he is a failed asylum seeker, barred from taking employment and living hand to mouth.
This new ruling is the further tightening of the screw against a vulnerable group who have been scapegoated for all society's ills, now facing a segregation worse than apartheid. The next step is death and illness, the suffering of children and public health issues. As a society that permits people with tuberculosis to go without treatment, will we just be getting what we deserve when infectious diseases spread? Because, after all, diseases do not discriminate.
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