Call to scrap £625 fee for foreign doctors and nurses to use the NHS
by Denis Campbell from World news | The Guardian on (#4X553)
Health professionals back King's Fund thinktank after 'perverse' rise in fee
The government should stop charging overseas doctors and nurses hefty fees to use the NHS in order to help tackle the service's deepening staffing crisis, Britain's leading health thinktank has urged.
The King's Fund warns that the charges - which are about to go up from 400 to 625 a year for foreign workers and their dependants - are a "perverse" deterrent to the very staff the government admits it needs to attract to plug holes in the NHS workforce. The rise means a health professional from abroad with a partner and two children will have to pay 2,500 a year.
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