Islanders deserve medical insurance scheme that covers everyone

In an article in this newspaper in 2016 Deputy Graham Guille, who was a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Association, said there was an offer on the table for an agreement, which was turned down by HSSD as it meant it would lose £500,000 of income a year from British patients – but apparently a lot of billed patients were not paying up, and one suspects that we were costing the UK possibly more, so it would have been a very good deal for us.

We are now in the appalling situation where if we go to the UK to visit family or friends, as many of us do, we find we are not covered by some travel insurances because we are not staying in hotels. We still have the case where some people cannot obtain medical insurance because of pre-existing conditions or find it prohibitively expensive because of their age.

The States of Guernsey have decided that this matter is not a funding priority for Health & Social Care. Surely the payment to the UK should not come out of HSC’s budget but be funded independently, perhaps from Social Security. Shame on the States for not insisting on finding the money from elsewhere, especially when there appears to be so much waste for vanity projects.

We were promised a medical insurance scheme to protect islanders from large bills if they fall ill in the UK that would target those who would struggle to obtain medical insurance. We need and deserve better than that, we need a scheme that covers us all.

I do hope this recent case of Monique de Carteret has alerted deputies to the serious situation in which islanders are finding themselves when visiting friends and relations in the UK.

J. BICHARD,

Forest.