11 Comments

  1. I have, as have most UK folk, a National Health Card with a unique number. What more do they need?

  2. Not a problem! Like all good citizens of member countries of the EU I take my European Health insurance Card with me when I travel to a different country in the EU so that I can get “reciprocal medical treatment” if and when I need it. I then claim any “excess” back from the UK.

  3. What is this NHS card of which you speak?
    I certainly don’t have one & never have.
    And I think the old E111 card doesn’t work any more either ( though I’m not too certain about that )

    My answer(s) to this are always the same:
    ONE: I ALREADY HAVE an “Identity Card” dated from 1946, when I was born, and since the “last” address on it is the same as now, I DO NOT NEED another one, thank you!
    TWO: If it’s really that difficult, you could always use the method that was practised on a couple of people I once worked with (one is certainly still alive ) … just tattoo the ID code on the inside of their wrists.
    No? Perhaps not? ……

    • Greg, I have such “Tattooed friends as well.

      Medical insurance cards are a MUST in most european countries.

      But they mean NOTHING when the “Government” allow relative of people living here, to claim health benefits without ever having paid a Pfenig into the system, or EVER having even see Germany on a bloody MAP!

      Turkish family living in Berlin (for example). They have Great Grandmother at “home” who needs a hip replacement.

      The German health system IS OBLIGED to pay for it!!!

      My Grand Mother who is a fourth or fifth generation Berlinerin, and can trace the family back to 1400 in this area, can not get a knee operation for the next THREE YEARS(!)

      Where the FUCK is Hitler when you need him??

      • My Grand Mother who is a fourth or fifth generation Berlinerin, and can trace the family back to 1400 in this area, can not get a knee operation for the next THREE YEARS(!)

        We are usually being told by those who hate the NHS and want it scrapped that everything is perfection in the German health system. Apparently not.

        Where the FUCK is Hitler when you need him??

        I believe that a fragment of his skull turned up in a shoebox in a KGB archive.

  4. I don’t believe this NHS card will ever happen. The financial case for it does not stack up. The estimate is that £10 million a year is lost through “health tourism”, which is an infinitesimal portion of the NHS budget. How much would it cost to implement ID Cards. Well we know the answer. The LSE calculated the impact across all branches of government to be between £20 and 30 billion and that was ten years ago.

    The only reason why this has come up is because of the Eastleigh by-election. The Tories think – rightly – that ID Cards would appeal to UKIP voting authoritarians.

    • Out of interest Stephen, which UKIP policies do you view as being any more authoritarian than those enacted by the three mainstream parties over the last 20 odd years?

      • I don’t think I said anything about UKIP’s policies being authoritarian but that authoritarian Tories might more inclined to vote for them. Plainly that is what the Tories think. Having read UKIP’s manifesto it is more interesting what they do not say.

        The last 30 years have shown that when one liberalises markets and makes government “smaller” (i.e. the welfare state) then the security state expands. This statement is confirmed by our recent history. Thatcher came in with a mandate to make the state “smaller” yet she presided over a vast centralisation of power and gave substantial new and potent powers to the police. There were also several attempts during her administration to introduce identity cards. The same with John Major and particularly with New Labour.

        I am sure many here think of New Labour being trotskyists but that’s just juvenile bollocks. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour privatised more than Thatcher and made the state “smaller” so that private interests could make money from the areas it abandoned, in social care particularly. New Labour wasn’t stalinist, it was neo-liberal, which believes in a small state, when it is the welfare state, but in a very large state when it is the security state.

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