Overseas visitors access to the NHS

Blast Films in London are making a documentary for the BBC 's Panorama series on the UK’s National Health Service, looking at the ways that overseas visitors access healthcare in the UK. We are keen to speak to overseas citizens who have used the NHS about whether or not they have been required to pay for their treatment. Conversations can be in confidence. Please contact Mark Olden at Blast Films, molden@blastfilms.co.uk or + 44 207 267 4260. Many thanks.

Welcome!

Are you looking for people who are here legally on visas using the NHS? Our visa conditions do allow us to the use the NHS as anyone else- and that would be nice to get that perspective out there that those of us legally here are allowed to use the NHS and we don't abuse it.

Likewise, it would be really interesting to get some good persepectives about visitors not abusing the NHS, because our members are really, really good about making sure they pay and not abusing the NHS.   (Note, A&E and family planning services -but not prenatal care- are free of charge to anyone) 

I think it'd be nice to see those people who are actively trying to repay their NHS charges and coming up against ignorant surgeries represented on tv. There were quite a few people in the Visas forum who tried over and over again to pay for treatments they received as visitors and couldn't, as the GP surgeries had no idea how to bill them!

There's always more than one side to the story, and if there's no system in place for visitors to pay, how can we expect them to?

Thank you. We are keen to speak to people who both tried to pay, as well as those who didn't.

I think, because we are all clued up here, most of us have tried to/have paid because we know better.

I had to go to the GP for an issue when I was here on Bunac and when I called I told them I had to be a private patient.  They said I might be covered, because it might have been an emergency, but it wasn't and I paid. 

But they obviously had private patients before because they have a price list posted at the window.