Health board gives up on $1.6m debts

An Auckland health board has given up trying to recover $1.6 million in bad debts owed by foreigners ineligible for healthcare.

Counties Manukau board chief executive Stephen McKernan said yesterday that its bad debts from foreigners reached $2 million to $2.5 million a year.

The Health Ministry covered the losses so they arguably did not directly eat into the funding allocated for Counties Manukau people, but they did cut into the Government's total health budget, he said.

In the year to June 30, the ministry gave $9 million to district health boards nationally to compensate for bad debts.

The Government has progressively clamped down on providing free healthcare to foreigners.

Mr McKernan said only about 20 per cent of the cost of treating ineligible foreign patients was repaid by the patients.

"Sometimes people will pay back over a number of years. They pay back $50 a fortnight [for instance]."

Many of the patients were Pacific Islanders, but there were also Asians, Europeans and Americans.

They sought help for a range of conditions, but the largest number were women giving birth.

Non-resident women coming to the country to give birth have been charged since September last year.

The Counties Manukau board, which runs Middlemore Hospital, services a population of 390,000 within its region.