Beware Europe’s hospital scam

Piper Terrett rounds up this week’s personal finance news, including the Spanish scam aimed at sick tourists, and the IT problems plaguing RBS customers.

Holidaymakers off to Spain this summer, be warned. Private hospitals are luring tourists who fall ill on holiday to their clinics and landing them with big bills, says Teresa Hunter in The Sunday Telegraph. Insurers say the culprits are being aided by tour operators, taxi drivers and even local police, who are "offered backhanders" for directing tourists to cash-strapped private clinics, rather than state-run hospitals.

The clinics then refuse to accept the tourists' European Health Insurance cards (Ehics). Some have even hired debt collectors to chase outstanding debts. The European Commission has threatened Spain with legal action over the issue, and similar problems have been reported in Portugal and Greece.

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Piper Terrett is a financial journalist and author. Piper graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1997 and worked for Germaine Greer and for Adam Faith’s Money Channel before embarking on a career in business journalism. 

She has worked for most top financial titles, including Investors Chronicle, Shares magazine, Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money. She lectures part-time at London Metropolitan University and is the author of four books.