Don't be poor, disabled, sick or elderly . .

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/apr/19/rishi-sunak-sicknote-culture-welfare-reform-post-office-horizon-conservatives-labour-uk-politics-lastest-updates

So this is a big part of the next Tory strategy to get elected.

I hope the buggers don't get in

Yes ignore those telling the truth

Lifestyle related conditions now account for the majority of deaths and disabilities in the developed world. These are condition we have some control over. It isn't I'm a utopia where we can acknowledge this and seek to do what we can as individuals to stay well. Is it harder to do this with limited funds and time? Of course, but that doesn't mean that you should just give up and blame the government/capitalists/whoever else isn't you.

There will always be people that are disabled and unwell who were just genuinely unlucky. A civilised society should seek to support these people to a reasonable standard. This is made harder if there number is doubled by those developing preventable diseases and disabilities. It isn't rocket science to calculate that this will put pressure on any resources available.

Hard to report a fantasy though.

Most don't. How do you know this?

If the people you are talking about are claiming disability/sickness benefits, there are no repeat sick notes involved. That is not how the system works.

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That would suit some perfectly.
Benefits fraud is an imprisonable offence, defrauding the public is now taken very seriously. Of course it needs to be reported. Apart from anything it’s depriving those that really need it.

All the millions lost to benefit fraud could be spent in the NHS for example.
We are all suffering because of theft and fraud.

The custody sentence is substantial.

So could all the billions wasted by the Government.

I know which I’d like to target first…

There is a lot of uneducated people on here pip fraud was at 0.2 % in 2023. Anyone who has ever claimed or attempted to claim pip would know it is one of the hardest if not the hardest benefits to claim. You have to have lots of supporting evidence to go with your claim im under 7 consultants across 3 trusts. I take 72 pills a day and average about 3 medical appointments a week, I sleep on average 15-18 hrs a day and haven't left the house except for medical appointments with the help of ambulance services in years yet I still had to fight to get pip and go through mandatory reconsideration and that was with the help of my gp and consultants fighting for me. I would be surprised if anyone got awarded pip for mental illness alone unless it was severe enough to where the individual is under secondary care. All these people saying I know someone who gets its for this, its always a neighbours grandsons uncles friend. Where you don't know the full story. Even people im closest to have no clue about half my medical conditions or what my life is actually like. So maybe stop being so judgemental and guliable about a system you know nothing about.

Yawn. We are suffering due to the inept Government that we have had for the last 14 years. Get it right.

This is the issue.

A poster who assesses claims wrote a very eloquent post a while back about the circumstances a lot of claimants live in. It wasn’t blaming individuals, more describing the culture under which a lot of people live due to lack of education and the culture around them.

Essentially a lot of them have grown up in claiming households, they have never been exposed to the world of work and all they really know anything about is the benefits system and how to extract as much from it as possible. Because they’re not working they live chaotic lifestyles alongside other chaotic people- drinking, smoking/vaping, drugs, bad quality food. So inevitably they end up collecting an array of diagnoses over the years which then further embed them into the benefits system. They inevitably have children which then further restricts any prospect of work and means yet more claims. As the years go by they become completely unemployable as their mindset, mental health, physical health and life skills mean they just aren’t up to it. And the cycle then continues.

It was quite a sympathetic post actually, but the issue is throwing money at them isn’t the answer, but nor can you make them do anything by way of bringing their children up responsibly and healthily. The only solutions are fairly radical and at odds with our societal values of a right to family life, bodily autonomy and so on.

Actually you may be right about the theft, and fraud, if you mean that which is being committed by this Government@Polishedshoesalways .

The rolls are high because there have been almost no LCWRA re-assessments for the past 4 years due to covid. Literally hundreds of thousands of claimants who might be able to work haven't even had a phone call to check if they are still sick. It's a huge scandal.

There was also an independent report released a few weeks ago that suggested claimants were moving en masse from jobseeking to sick claims (LCRWA/PIP) because the Tories have made the process so utterly brutal and low paying that it was less stressful, and higher paying, to get signed off sick than to deal with their cruelty.

An NHS England commissioner raises some interesting points about Labour's healthcare plans and the people who would benefit from them. tl;dr Because private hospitals don't have ICUs or HDUs, they will be taking cases that are in relatively healthier people who may be less likely to need ICUs and HDUs because they don't have the number of long-term conditions such as heart disease and diabetes (type 2) that people with poorer socio-economic backgrounds do.

With NHSEngland in crisis, why is @UKLabour looking to @PHIN_UK private hospitals as the solution?
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q858
[Question Helen Salisbury poses in BMJ:

This week the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, promised to bring in the private sector to help reduce NHS waiting lists. He also stated that no extra resources would be available for the health service under a Labour government.
One of the problems with this plan is that it assumes separate sets of doctors and nurses in the NHS and the private sector, with the latter group currently underemployed and kicking their heels. In reality there’s a single pool of staff, nearly all of whom have been trained by the NHS, and many of them work in both sectors. The lack of beds in NHS hospitals isn’t usually a physical equipment issue—it can’t be fixed by a trip to Ikea or even by constructing a Nightingale hospital—but is about having the nurses and doctors to safely care for the patients in the beds. ]

Good Q Helen HelenRSalisbury . Wes wesstreeting & LabourHealth have probably tick-box'd you off already as a 'middle class leftie'!

Guess what, it will b middle class lefties like urself & myself, w/ co-morbidities who will b pushed to the forefront of the WL queue to be Rx'd in those private hospitals while the poor w/ co-morbidities will have 2 remain content w/ crumbling NHSEngland facilities

https://twitter.com/pash22/status/1781240922346311829

We desperately need realistic conversations about the NHS and sustainability of health and social care. It plays out in so many dimensions with vast impacts on people's quality of life, individual and national finances.

It’s easy to be, and sound, so smug when you’ve never had to do a hard days work in your life bc you’re a multi millionaire.
Never mind Rishi I’m sure the servants will have chilled the champagne for you for when you get home at the end of your oh so stressful day.
The Tories have to asap.

Most don't?

I presume you've got a report that backs up your claim? Or maybe you're just talking bollocks?

Please, please, please Mr Sunak, could we get my friend off sick benefits and back to the job he is so terrified of loosing, by not making him wait nine moths for another ablation or a pacemaker, if he hasn't succumbed to a stroke or heart attack first? PLEASE?

He has been waiting as urgent since December and is expected to be seen by a consultant in August! He is now suffering all the side effects of this condition and has gone from a strong fit individual working a six day week covering miles daily through work, to barely able to walk on hugely swollen fluid filled legs and and struggling to breathe while his heart is being unnecessarily allowed to fail. WHY?

He doesn't want to be on SSP, but his employer can't have him working in the state he's in. He doesn't want to have to claim PIP to keep him able to meet medical expenses as he hits half pay. He doesn't want to be managed out of his career on competency grounds. He doesn't want to be forced onto benefits.
His work is his life, and he wants to be doing it.

HE WANTS AND NEEDS AN OPERATION AND TO GO BACK TO WORK ASAP!

How many more are like him languishing on sick notes terrified of the future or that it may never come, because they need a relatively simple procedure, but the NHS is on its knees with outrageous queues for life saving operations that allow people to work?

How will changing who writes their unfit for work certificates, get them the operations they need so they can return to their work?

Well some of us have neighbours that are also friends and yes I do know what he put on his forms.

Makes me furious about my neighbour and I have reported him to the inland revenue for working cash in hand and the benefits people for claiming to be to ill to leave the house but actually leaving the house every day.

Two consecutive posts from this poster. So in one breath you call him a friend, but in the next you reported him for benefit fraud? Do you treat all your 'friends' like that? Or just the imaginary ones?

And the cost for housing refugees at Scampton which was at the planning stage said to be £5million but now it’s gone up to £27million.

Either someone needs firing for gross ineptitude at the planning stage and it needs looking at again to see whether it’s cost effective or a load of Tory mates have got in with rip off contracts to make themselves very rich. Probably a combination. We should be rioting over stuff like this!

My other friend is seriously disabled but works. She has been left looking after him, with her health suffering as a result. This is two people who normally work and want to work, being slowly forced out of their work. WHY?

I actually don’t think that the concept of getting someone else to write fit notes is a bad one, IF the intent is that this is a resource that is also used to recommend adjustments to work (that employers HAVE to comply with) to help people get back to work more quickly. Which would ideally include an ability to push people up waiting lists for treatment, if possible & clinically appropriate.

I don’t believe that’s what’s driving this, though.

They started off that way...

How will it work? Someone who is a student, or can't work, or is currently unemployed, loses their place in the huge queues for an operation and is left to have a heart attack or stroke, so someone who can work doesn't, and can get back to work?

Yes, initially they would have needed a fit note whilst waiting for their assessment. But "repeat" fit notes are not what entitles a person to long term ESA and are not required.