‘Shameful saga’ highlights need for reciprocal health agreement
LIKE most readers feel, I trust, how right to give such prominence in your Saturday edition to the shocking lack of emergency health care cover given to islanders when visiting – of all places – the mainland (‘Widow left with £10,000 bill for hip surgery in UK’, 11 August).
On the basis of your reportage, this raises a number of rather unattractive issues.
If Jersey and the Isle of Man can provide reciprocal arrangements (and, as we know, up to nearly 10 years ago, so did Guernsey), is this Bailiwick that
badly managed that it is unable to offer the same protection?
Maybe if the States wasted less money on their various fantasy-cum-vanity projects and concentrated more on what actually matters, then this needless loophole could have been plugged. So much too for frittering funds promoting incoming tourism to UK residents in the face of such a glaring omission; I wonder if they know of it?
It also seems that the small print governing health insurance exclusions for travellers is becoming more complicated and selective, as insurers seek to avoid paying for bona fide claims, so unless you are prepared to sit down and try to interpret the confusing legalese in which they are couched, it is hard to truly know to what extent your cover is. It is news to me that in order to qualify for this, the definition of a holiday can now require the inclusion and needless expense of a two-night hotel bill (in circumstances where previous claims have been made, you have pointed out; worrying perhaps, but which to me, still does rather beg the question of – why?). How very convenient, too, for the mainland hotel industry.
Whether or not Guernsey is part of the UK? A fine distinction if you care to argue the point between that and a Crown Dependency and, again, all part of the general small print obfuscation.
Aviva must be one of, if not the, largest UK insurance companies, so you would have thought between them, the HSBC, the not inconsiderable resources of the health services both here and in England and sheer common sense, some arrangement could easily be brokered to waive the whole amount in such unfortunate circumstances?
The only good news to emerge from this shameful saga is that at least the NHS acted promptly and I wish Mrs de Carteret a full recovery along with both a speedy and ultimately full redress over this whole miserable episode.
NICHOLAS BUSER,
St Peter Port.