Don't let foreigners use the NHS - but let us use your hospitals

The clarion call from the right wing of British Politics, which seems to include everything in mainstream politics, is that foreigners are using up valuable resources in the UK and of particular concern is the over use of NHS resources.

I wonder how these people feel, now that a British patient is being treated in a Swedish hospital, for swine flu.

There are five specialist beds in Britain for the technique, known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), at a hospital in Leicester, but they are currently all taken, so this woman was flown into Sweden, where she is now receiving treatment at Karolinska University Hospital in Solna.


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It would be interesting to take a straw poll on those who object to foreigners using NHS resources, on whether British Nationals using valuable resource in foreign hospitals is acceptable, or should this woman just have been left to see how it all turned out?

The NHS is in the process of making contingency plans to fly a limited number of swine flu patients to European hospitals if Britain’s intensive care services become overwhelmed.