NHS hospitals in England will have a legal duty to charge overseas patients upfront for non-urgent care if they are not eligible for free treatment.
From April this year, foreign patients could be refused operations unless they cover their costs in advance.
NHS Improvement, which oversees the trusts, said hospitals would no longer have to chase money they are owed.
Emergency treatment will continue to be provided and invoiced later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38876527

and post that really crap announcement, you need to read carefully through it all.

Details of treatment given to visitors from EEA countries should be forwarded to the Department of Health so the costs can be recouped from their governments.
That will mean the DOH will have to employ a team of staff to recover the money. They'll likely award a contract to a private company like Serco, or similar, who will charge more than they recover.

The health secretary said the aim was to recover up to ?500m a year by the middle of this Parliament to reinvest in the NHS.
But that so called ?500 million has already been spent by the NHS trateing patients, so he's going to invest back into the NHS money that the NHS is owed anyway, but only if the DOH can recover it. How can that be called investment, giving money back that is already theirs?

A Nigerian woman owes ?330,000 after giving birth prematurely to quadruplets in a west London hospital. Her bill is thought to be among the largest unpaid by an overseas patient - but she has no ability to pay it. Priscilla would still have received urgent treatment under the new arrangements because her life and those of her babies - two of whom died - were at risk.
So why highlight something whereby no payment would have been made anyway? Good example eh.

Dr Meirion Thomas, a former cancer surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital, told Radio 4's Today programme that the plan was a "smokescreen".
and that surgeon isn't wrong. Government just wanting to make glib unplanned and unworkable headlines about how they're looking after the NHS.