Quote Originally Posted by darren-b View Post
So exactly how many years do you need to have been in the UK so that you should be able to live somewhere else and visit the UK and claim from the NHS for life? 5 years would get you British citizenship, is that enough? How about if you were born in the UK and only worked for a few years then left, is that enough? What about someone who has been out of the UK for 30 years? In some cases maybe the rules aren't morally correct, but unfortunately rules like this have to be black and white.
As I said if the home base has irrevocably changed, the person has sold up, has no UK taxable assets or business, has upped and left, then yes under current rules they should not really expect treatment as a tourist.

But I think in many cases the rules are not morally correct and certainly in the case of pensioners who have contributed all of their lives I think it is just wrong.

I think my problem with all this, is that I don't think the rules have to be black & white, rules like this are usually black & white because someone can't be bothered to think up something better.

I don't think retired pensioners should be refused treatment because they choose to retire abroad, they get their pension abroad so why should they not come home to get treatment now and then.

For the rest of us I think the one year limit is restrictive, if you are going to have charges they could be scaled on an accumulated contributions basis, that would be fairer to everyone. There are many different ways you could implement this, you could retain the arbitrary absence period but scale the charges on an accumulated contributions basis, or you could scale the allowed time out of the country based on contributions history, I'm sure people could think up many other ways that would be more in the spirit of the NI system.

Whenever people suggest things like this there is always the old "oh well, it's too hard to administer" argument, well it shouldn't be too hard, I mean how hard is it to do a bit of arithmetic, we have computers for that.

Just my thoughts.


Jim