Bleeding Dry the Health Care System: Foreign Tourists By James Reed
It is not just the US which is suffering from migrant/globalisation overload; Australia is too. Consider the costs now imposed by tourists, foreign workers and international students on our collapsing public hospitals:
“Tens of millions of dollars in public hospital debts are being run up by tourists, foreign workers and international students each year, prompting a renewed bid to make them pay their way.
However, a NSW proposal to require all visitors to take out health insurance, separate to any travel insurance they might have, has served only to highlight the complexity of the problem.
When NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard put the proposal on the agenda for the Council of Australian Governments Health Council, he received the cautious backing of several states and his federal counterpart, Greg Hunt.
“Regardless of who they are, if you are sick you should be able to access healthcare,” Mr Hunt told The Australian.
“However, there is a cumulative effect when temporary visa holders, who are often here on holiday, access our public health system, incur costs, and then leave the country with debts unpaid.”
A ministerial advisory committee has since been asked to recommend options to “ease the burden on Australia’s public health system” without jeopardising the tourism, skilled worker and education sectors.
Mr Hazzard said about $30 million worth of public hospital treatment for Medicare-ineligible patients in NSW was left unpaid each year. Most of that was for hospital accommodation.
NSW has highlighted the case of an uninsured patient from China who spent two months in hospital recovering from a brain haemorrhage and was unable to pay the $250,000 bill.
In some cases, visa holders give birth in public hospitals, leading to speculation trips are being planned to allow mothers to access Australia’s health system.”
As always, we are being played as suckers, all a product of deracination mixed with globalisation, the open movement of people and money, money, money. When the “good people” who have done nothing about immigration and globalisation desperately want medical treatment, but the cupboard is bare, will they think then?
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