Asylum seekers receiving ‘preferential medical treatment’ despite increasing wait times for Britons

20 comments

1. Is this sub going the way of ukpolitics and unitedkingdom where it’s just going to be astroturfed with anti-immigrant posts day after day?

2. [Here](https://gps.northcentrallondon.icb.nhs.uk/services/987-inclusion-health) is the page for the scheme they are describing specifically. This is accomplished by accessing [same-day emergency care](https://gps.northcentrallondon.icb.nhs.uk/services/same-day-emergency-care-uclh) intended for “patients with acute medical conditions”, yet the inclusion criteria seems to be “over 18s who: are homeless, use, or have used, class A drugs, are on methadone/buprenorphine, struggle with persistent alcohol misuse, are undocumented migrants, have other issues that mean they may have been excluded from good quality healthcare in the past.”

   For those concerned about radicalisation or the rise of the ‘far right’, let me just make one point that you would benefit from understanding – this is precisely the kind of thing that radicalises people. If you’re worried about Reform gaining popularity, you need to take this seriously because being made second class in a healthcare system you pay for makes people very angry.

3. What are they supposed to do? Sign up to the local gp surgery? We do have a duty of care to these people, and them receiving medical treatment doesn’t come at the cost of everyone else. If you’re unhappy with the state of the NHS you can blame the 14 years of tory government and the fallout of brexit, that’s the root cause. Demand more from your leaders and stop punching down.

4. This is really depressing to read. I was recently in A&E and had to wait for 10 hours in excruciating pain (I couldn’t walk and any medicine they gave me I threw up). It seems rather unfair.

5. I have no issue with immigrants receiving health care, but they should be in the same queue as everyone else.
   Them jumping the queue is a piss take to be fair.!

6. Games gone. Give them nothing. We simply don’t have the capacity to cope.

7. Two tier starmer strikes again….

8. Right, so not only do they have to book in advance for these “preferential medical treatment” appointments, but, what, it says it’s a fact that most asylum seekers and migrants who need medical attention are less likely to go into hospital *because of fear of being deported/bills/being misunderstood.

   What a misleading fucking title.

   Making it appear as if: if you go to A&E, and you’re a Briton, sorry mate but an illegal foreigner will be seen before you.

   What it actually is: In very few locations, asylum seekers can see urgent care if they book an appointment in advance… Because they can’t register with a GP but in A&E this may be seen as preferential treatment. But, if an asylum seeker goes to A&E as an emergency like Britons… Yep, you guessed it, it’ll depend on the fucking urgency.

   In short: FUCK The Telegraph. Fuck this bullshit propaganda. Fuck the rich. Fuck the years of austerity. Fuck the lack of action. Fuck the lack of funding for the NHS. Fuck the growing hate. Fuck Reform UK. Fuck Elon Musk. Fuck all the conflict worldwide that gives us the fucking asylum seekers.

9. Rage bait article doing its best.

   Most people will have an A and E waiting story. I’ve a few myself.

   Pretty sure if I was able to go see all the people ahead of me those days, very much doubt that the numbers would be flooded with immigrants.

   Weird how they can be both undocumented and yet still know government schemes when I work with very much documented immigrants who have trouble finding a local library and getting free data through databank.

   “Critics have questioned…” which critics?
   Those critics could literally be people in their newspaper office who’ve already made up assumptions on others.
   They could be Redditor’s on this very thread.

10. While I hate the Telegraph. This is deeply unfair if actually true. It is the Telegraph after all. Did like the jabs at Kier Starmer like he personally welcomed the boats here. The graph showing the massive incretin wait times over the Tory administration is telling. I bet it started ramping up in 2010. Migrants or not, this article is aimed at shifting blame for the collapsing NHS from 14 years of Tory deliberate mismanagement to promote privatisation to the Migrants. 

11. If you complain or question this state of affairs you are deemed racist. We are circling the drain unless we wake up.

12. Another day another Torygraph article fluffing the Toby carvery lads up into a pink rage….

13. What most people don’t realise is that if you were to call the A&E or 111 in advance and say that you’re bringing in someone who is particularly vulnerable and they won’t be able to wait for 4+ hours and need to be seen upon arrival, you’ll get the same treatment.

    I regularly bring in vulnerable people as part of my job. You wouldn’t want those people having a crisis due to their vulnerability in a waiting room full of other unwell people. This is a barrier to them being able to receive urgent care, they simply couldn’t make waiting for 10 minutes, let alone hours.

    How many ‘british’ people do you think use (and abuse) the NHS that haven’t paid a penny into it in their lives?

    Rather than reform, this previous government has sold vast chunks of the NHS off and now they have to use their budgets paying third party companies to use their services, often within their own buildings, It’s a joke.
    Rather than invest, it’s had money syphoned off into execs bank accounts, hospital buildings have been sold to developers and the money going back into duty coffers.

    I won’t comment on asylum seekers getting triaged quicker, because it’s just inflammatory BS that only happens in rare cases.

    Don’t blame people who have no choice. Blame the people who fucked this country up and laughed as they did so

14. Well, citizens might as well claim to be asylum seekers.

15. It’s already been stated but let’s look at the criteria again:

    INCLUSIONS
    IH patients, meaning over 18s who:

    are homeless

    use, or have used, class A drugs

    are on methadone/buprenorphine
    struggle with persistent alcohol misuse

    are undocumented migrants

    have other issues that mean they may have been excluded from good quality healthcare in the past.

    A and E is there for people who need it more than you. That’s how it works.
    And sometimes there’s an awful lot of people in a far worse state than you are make you wait a long time.

    NHS staff don’t care about your choices or who you are. Their sole job is to fix the sick. Instead of treating this as a virtue to cherish and love there’s a lot if you don’t deserve to have health care talk going on.

16. When did this come in? We didn’t prioritise any asylum seekers last week or the week before? Were we supposed to? It’s bollocks, as per usual.

17. Under a specific scheme… they’re not getting it just willy-nilly.

18. 20+ year NHS consultant here, I work in same day emergency care/A&E and have worked in many London hospitals.

    The article is very misleading – let me clarify a few things

    1) The number of asylum seekers in the country is tiny – I see <5/month at hospital.

    The general public massively overestimate the number of asylum seekers in the country – it is a meme used by the right to distract from the true root causes (which are boring/less tangible than Jonny foreigner is stealing x).

    2) if you are not a British citizen, you have to pay for your care. There are no exceptions to this – if my patient isn’t a citizen, they’re sent to the finance office and given a large bill (think tens of thousands).

    If you can’t pay (as is usually the case with asylum seekers) you’ll receive life saving treatment and nothing else. This policy ends up costing more money as minor issues are allowed to turn into major ones.

    3) asylum seekers do not receive VIP NHS healthcare. Very much the opposite. They have very limited access compared to citizens, and consequently their health outcomes are drastically worse.

    Having a small urgent care clinic dedicated to underserved communities saves resources in the longer term.

    If you neglect them, they eventually pitch up critically unwell (which is far more resource intensive).

    I’m sure some people would rather we allow asylum seeker to die on the street – aside from being immoral, desperate people do desperate things. If your loved one needed costly treatment to live, what would you do to get cash?

    Do not blame sick people for the problems the NHS has. The problems are there solely because our tax money went into the Tory’s pockets instead of being invested in health and social care.

    The data doesn’t lie – that is the root cause, they reduced funding for over a decade + and we are now feeling the effects of that.

19. Man, this is a bit disheartening. I’ve paid nearly £2.7K in NHS surcharge for my visa renewal, on top of NI and taxes, and I’ve only used it a few times when I really needed medical attention. I’ve always supported the system because I understand its importance, but reading that asylum seekers might be getting preferential treatment over natives and people like me who contribute feels frustrating. If this is accurate, maybe the system does need a closer look. That said, I’m not ungrateful—I just think fairness matters for everyone.

20. People are hell-bent to distort reality, so it makes their bigotry and rage reasonable.

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