Health tourism? your views?

I think that it's a good idea to make people pay if they haven't contributed anything to it. At the same time I recognise that some people can't pay cash : perhaps there could be some contract that they could sign to agree to pay by the month or something similar : a hospital has plenty of ways of identifying people ; digital camera, DNA et c.

It appears that the abuse of the system is severe, and the appropriate response needs also to be severe. Those who enter the country, especially illegal immigrants, should have no right to draw on services paid for by citizen taxpayers.

Yes, from a humanitarian point of view a portion of those would-be freeloaders will suffer. Heart attack victims will be stabilized and then turned out, well before they should be from a strictly medical point of view. In most cases, that is more than they would have gotten in their home countries -- where those without the ability to pay for medical services just die in the gutters.

British citizen have no responsibility to pay for unlimited medical services, for people who have entered the nation -- at least in part -- to take advantage of the social and health services which the nation makes available to its citizens.

I agree. Nobody would think of going to the USA without medical insurance ... for exactly the same reason. The same would happen there, you'll get the minimum treatment possible and sent on your way. At some hospitals, if you have no cover, you might be refused and sent to another. We should treat our visitors just the same. As blacksmith said, make it a condition of entry if necessary.

One big problem regarding the medical insurance documents is that they would presumably be issued by the source country, which may not be English speaking.

There have been numerous instances in the local media recently where foreign drivers have been involved in accidents, but their foreign insurance documents haven't been decipherable to the UK interested parties.

Even once the insurance companies have been identified and contacted, they are showing an unfortunate tendency simply to ignore claim letters from the UK and other countries.

Everyone in the country deserves free health care, If the person is on holiday then they too should be able to pay a one off fee covering for anything that may happen like a medical insurance scheme so to speak. If they do not get the insurance then if they need to receive treatment they still get it but are hit with the full whack. In order for this to work though their country of origin has to be signed to agree that the UK can recover the costs despite being away from the UK.