<p>This came up in another forum.</p>
<p>If I become a full-time student in the UK, as a USA citizen, and live and study in the UK on a student visa, am I eligible for complete free healthcare on the National Health System? If there are limits, what are they? Or if there is a cost, what would it be?</p>
<p>KEVP</p>
<p>So long as they’re there for 6 months + then they will be eligible for free NHS treatment as anyone else is. [International</a> students - A guide to The National Health Service (NHS) ? University of Leicester](<a href=“Sign in to your account”>Sign in to your account) </p>
<p>There is talk of a £200 one-off levy, but this hasn’t been brought in (IMO it won’t be either) and even if it was it’s piffling compared to the cost of US healthcare [BBC</a> News - Foreigners face more charges to access NHS](<a href=“http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23156403]BBC”>Foreigners face more charges to access NHS - BBC News)</p>
<p>You will get an NHS enrollment form with your other enrollment papers when you are registering for uni. It’s very straightforward.</p>
<p>If you study in England or Wales, you’ll pay for your prescriptions- £7.85 per item. They do season tickets which are handy if you have a long term condition. </p>
<p>Dental Care with the NHS is cheaper than private surgeries although not every area has free spaces on the NHS. You can shop around.</p>
<p>Non-threatening things like physio or podiatry are better off going private, if you can afford it as you can be waiting many, many months for an appointment. My private physio charges £30 for a 15 min consultation but so long as I do his exercises, I’ve only need 3 and then 2 sessions 3 years apart which, I think, is a good deal.</p>
<p>My mum had to wait a week for her physio to begin. Not long at all. No need to go private.</p>
<p>Bit of a postcode lottery on physio in my experience. Once had to wait three months for one session of physio following major surgery whilst two neighbouring NHS trusts fought it out over who should provide it (I lived in one area but went to school in the other. One based it on where you went to school and the other based it on home address <em>facepalm</em>)</p>
<p>However, to any Americans reading it, the NHS is fantastic, though it does have its moments. It’s incredibly popular with the British public and to mention so much as reducing funding (never mind abolishing it) would be electoral suicide for even the most right wing of politicians. There’s more support for fascism than abolishing the NHS. It also does better than the US on all sorts of key performance indicators, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, and for substantially less money than healthcare costs in the US. Most of what you heard about the NHS in relation to Obamacare isn’t true - I think the favourite quote I heard was someone claiming that if Steven Hawking was British he’d have been left to die at birth. He is British, and he clearly hasn’t been left to die! My grandmother, in her early 90s, has just had her cataracts done, so the elderly aren’t exactly abandoned either. My father’s cancer treatment couldn’t have been better. </p>
<p>When we moan about physio waiting times, or paying a £7.85 flat rate for prescriptions, we’re really just being petty because the rest of it is - on the whole - so good that we’re reduced to complaining about the petty stuff.</p>
<p>So is Dental Care “free”, in that I wouldn’t have to pay any money for it, under the NHS?</p>
<p>KEVP</p>
<p>You may have to pay towards it, but the charges are relatively low and many people are exempt on a means tested basis [NHS</a> dental charges - The NHS in England - NHS Choices](<a href=“http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/dentists/Pages/nhs-dental-charges.aspx]NHS”>Understanding NHS dental charges - NHS)</p>
<p>Dental and opticians are not free, but are subsidised, unless you are in reduced circumstances (unemployed, retired, under 18) or have associated illnesses (lots of new mothers get a lot of dental work I have found, because maternity leave counts as sickness and they get it all free).</p>
<p>I wish I could edit the above. It’s not clear. I meant that for most people dentists and opticians are subsidised but not free. However, for the poor and sick, the subsidy is 100%. A dental appointment costs about £18 I think.</p>