Skip to main content

This petition was submitted during the 2015 to 2017 Parliament

View other petitions from this Parliament

Closed petition Ensure that visitors to the UK have medical insurance for their stay.

Closed on

Medical attention given to overseas visitors (inc health tourism) is a drain on the NHS. The Border Agency should develop a method to ensure that visitors with visas also have appropriate medical insurance to cover them for their stay. The NHS could recover some of the £2B spent on overseas visitors

The combined cost of "deliberate health tourism" and unintentional visitor use of the NHS is estimated to be £2 billion per annum. No system is likely to be foolproof but every effort should be made to recover as much of that money as possible. Any recovered money should go directly to the relevant NHS trust.
Only 5% of that amount, £100 million, was recovered in 2013/14.

59 signatures


Petition progress

View all updates for this petition, with the most recent first.

  • Petition closed

  • Petition published

    This petition can now be signed.

    If this petition gets 10,000 signatures, government will respond to it.

    If this petition gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.

    This petition will stay open until 3 May 2017.