Tories considering benefit review for people with drug and obesity problems.

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I have to be really angry to start a thread in this topic .

Cutting benefits for people with addiction problems is surely only going to lead to them committing more crime to raise the money for drugs? Seeing as mental health support is already virtually nonexistent I can't imagine how they think this is going to work.

bbc link

That's bury not Burt! Stupid predictive text

Horrible, vindictive policy. They probably think it will win them votes but they don't realise that the people have had enough of the privileged picking on people while turning a blind eye to all the scandals involving their mates.

AddToBasket

"Yes, she is ill. She has mental health issues, delusion, terrible levels of fitness and stress exhaustion.

"All of which is facilitated by the welfare system."

How is it facilitated by the welfare system? Would withdrawal of benefits magically cure her?

Something tells me that you don't believe in ME.

This blog looks interesting, I just saw a link to it on twitter

Refusing treatment is a SYMPTOM of addiction. It is a disease! If financial incentives worked to cure it that would have been done a long time ago!

'All of which is facilitated by the welfare system.'

Nothing to do with having ME then? I'm sure withdrawing benefits will magically cure her.

As a health professional I am now thinking of ways to refuse to offer treatment to people who may be made destitute if they refuse my offer of treatment. I can't think of a worse start to a therapeutic relationship. I'll have to study the detail very closely, always assuming this ends up as an actual policy.

Will I have to score my patients out of 10 in how much effort they have put into treatment, with benefits depending on the results? If they don't attend an appointment will I have to sanction them?

Christ alive.

don't forget to do a drug and alcohol test on arrival meandjulio and smell their breath to see if they've been smoking.

*As a health professional I am now thinking of ways to refuse to offer treatment to people who may be made destitute if they refuse my offer of treatment. I can't think of a worse start to a therapeutic relationship. I'll have to study the detail very closely, always assuming this ends up as an actual policy.

Will I have to score my patients out of 10 in how much effort they have put into treatment, with benefits depending on the results? If they don't attend an appointment will I have to sanction them?

Christ alive.*

That, just that.

Gove has seen to our children's education. Now this - it could well turn into policy if Cameron is voted in again.

I also work as a nurse with patients who are on dialysis and drug addicts/obese. People's situations are ALWAYS complex and difficult. Cutting benefit for some really wouldn't help force them into work. Or perhaps those with kidney failure should just be told they can't have dialysis unless they work too? Then they can make their choice whether to die or not. Sounds crazy, right? Well don't hold your breath, because maybe that's next. Dialysis is a very expensive treatment.

what is crazy is how purely ideological it is anyway. for example the single parent with a 5 year old they've forced out to work for 16 hours isn't paying any tax by working, is still having to receive housing benefit, council tax rebate and probably more in working tax credit than she was in basic income support.

who has benefited by forcing her to work? the job she is doing could have been by someone who wanted/needed the job and wouldn't have been costing money in tax credits in order to do it such as a student or someone wanting a small job in a family that doesn't qualify for tax credits or a young person without children or an older person wanting to top up their pension.

sure if they were focusing on able bodied (and minded) people without dependents that makes sense but that's the one group they don't seem to have targeted.

IDS stated yesterday, on the Andrew Marr show, that nobody gets sanctioned .

Anyway, most of the ministers aren't too thin. Perhaps they could do with sanctions. Or do you have to be perfect if you're poor and reliant on in work or out of work benefits? Does it mean that if you're fat you don't have to pay NI?

The benefits bill ... nearly all of the money people are entitled to and claim is spent and goes back to the government in things like knock-on vat, income tax etc eventually, almost like a closed loop. Unlike the richest who often hold their money in long-term investments like property.

To be honest, if I wrote on here about my disgust for the government and my contempt of the idiots in charge who are in charge purely because of their background, not because of their ability or talent or leadership or intelligence (having met several top cabinet members semi-socially, I learnt this first hand) I'd be deleted.

The Conservative policy is to address those with drink and drugs problems who DO NOT SEEK HELP OFFERED, would this not also ease the pressure on the NHS over time, ease the pressures on their own families - and leave more money for those that really need it???

Labour killed the money and welfare trees, even Labour MP’s wanting to sound tough at election times know that, even when attacking a party that DOES something about it.

“Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits, promises new welfare chief”
“Rachel Reeves vows to cut welfare bill and force long-term jobless to take up work offers or lose state support”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/12/labour-benefits-tories-labour-rachel-reeves-welfare

And yet Labour brought in 4 million new economic migrants, but let our little wealth creators Miliband now lectures about to languish on benefits, with 16-24 year old unemployment trending up at an alarming rate from the over 500,000 in 2004 – within a money is no object Welfare State.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

”Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show.”

And clearly in Labour’s eyes, everyone who claims benefits TOTALLY deserves them, and this explains why when the coalition suggested everyone receiving sickness benefits had a medical, the first check in TEN years for many, 900,000 didn’t turn up?
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9963012/900000-choose-to-come-off-sickness-benefit-ahead-of-tests.html

And of course NO ONE going to a Food Banks, smokes, drinks alcohol, or has Sky TV, choosing to prioritise their spending THEIR way, as a Labour nanny state can not accept that, as NO ONE can make bad personal choices, do they - so how can those nasty Conservatives suggest they do? Yeah right.

The thing I hate is that the obesity crisis is in large part fuelled by the government. Obesity has soared since the 80's when fat has been demonised and masses of low fat products have been available. The advice is all wrong...eat less, move more, etc. this only leads to weight gain (see for example Zoe Harcombe). If you need to lose weight and you follow governmental advice you are likely to lose a bit of weight but studies show you will most likely regain and get bigger. We need a government which understands that fat doesn't make you fat, it is filling, it's fantastic for your health, we need a government which demonises sugar. If you have a food addiction it is very difficult to get it under control; there is so much cheap access to carbs and crappy sugary products.

Oh and I would agree, cbt is useless for M.E. GP's might offer it to patients, but the NHS is absolutely rubbish when it comes to researching the condition and knowing how to treat it. It can do huge harm. M.E patients are badly let down and I feel sorry for Addtobasket's aunt, having such a judgmental, ill informed family member. It's tough enough being so very ill without having to endure that kind of attitude. Luckily some fantastic research is being done around the world and I do think we are pretty close to there being some very viable treatment options which will help many.

The Tories are utter knobs.

agree - also i hate the way all blame is placed on the end result rather than the causes along the way re: the massive profits in using transfats or high glucose syrup which is cheaper and sweeter than sugar etc. all the toxic bad for us crap that is not really fit for human consumption but is legally allowed to be ploughed invisibly into foods.

every blame and control is placed on the consumer with no regulation upon the profit making orchestrators.

oh you're fat! oh you're a smoker! you're disgusting.

ok so if you're so bothered START by banning the use of nutritiously empty massively fucking up the body and metabolism substances in 'food'. start by banning the sale of massively addictive carcinogenic substances on every street corner. no?

just blame the people who suffer the inevitable outcomes.

if you deem selling tobacco a legal thing then no you can't turn round and say people who get a smoking related disease should be denied treatment for example. you can't profit at both ends.

Yes - you are so right.

Drug dealers are vilified and prosecuted when one of their clients dies from taking a drug they've supplied. The user is seen as a victim.

Not so tobacco addicts and dealers.

tobacco companies have been absolved by printing 'smoking kills' on their packets but i'm not sure it absolves the government that licenses them to sell to citizens and collects literally billions and billions in taxes from the sale of tobacco goods on the one and then vilifies people for smoking on the other.

ok so if you're so bothered START by banning the use of nutritiously empty massively fucking up the body and metabolism substances in 'food'. start by banning the sale of massively addictive carcinogenic substances on every street corner. no?

People are not forced to buy and eat the nutritiously empty foods. People have a choice about what they put into their bodies. If people didn't buy things that are causing them to have serious health issues then the market for those things would become smaller and they wouldn't need to be banned because far fewer places would sell them.

i'm talking about ingredients.

cheap, unfit for human consumption, replacement substances being used in foods instead of actual normal ingredients despite them being known to be detrimental to health and linked to obesity and diabetes for example.

nor was i saying they should ban these things but that they can't have it both ways re: with the tobacco wanting to license it and take billions in revenue from it and then also want to scold people and withold services or treatment from them for doing it. you don't get to have both.

do wish you'd read first but i'm at least grateful you didn't respond with 372 copy and pasted bits of bold text and links.

'policy is to address those with drink and drugs problems who DO NOT SEEK HELP OFFERED'

I like that word 'address' - it's like 'look at', one of those political verbs I don't trust. More precise to say 'remove the state-provided income of'.

I actually do agree with the basic principle that a person's diagnosis or problems should not form the expectations for their life - that if you have addiction W, disease X, disability Y, mental health problem Z, you should not be thrown on the scrap heap and forgotten about. That was the original kernel of the big idea, and it's the one IDS talks about. That's quite different from refusing to accept that disability Y has any relevance at all. Or that these things have roots that go very deep.

The bowlrog in the woodpile is the distressing paradox that some people are well enough to come off benefits BECAUSE they're not working.

I wonder where those 900,000 people are now.

I did read it first. I still maintain that people have a choice about what they eat. People don't have to eat manufactured processed foods that are full of replacement substances. People can go and buy organic meat, chicken and fruit and vegetables and cook things themselves so they know what they are eating. People's consumption patterns have created a market for processed additive filled junk foods and the manufacturers are taking advantage of that market.
I don't see anybody being forced to buy foods which are unhealthy or full of questionable ingredients.

Research is now suggesting that ME/CFS may arise from mitochondrial dysfunction, an area of medical science that was pretty much unknown thirty years ago. There is real hope for better treatment. In the meantime, it's not an easy field to be on top of, medically. Even far better known diseases, like diabetes, often see GPs giving out seriously outdated advice. I really feel for GPs if they would be expected to judge how far someone had taken up treatment options given the possible diverse options and outcomes for people.

It's also not clear what happens if someone does take part in treatment but it doesn't work for them. If they've had some treatment but the problem remains, are they required to keep going back to something that doesn't seem to work for them, and costing the NHS money while doing so?

People can go and buy organic meat, chicken and fruit and vegetables

Less easy on benefits of course. Or if you live in an area where these things aren't easily available to buy.

Obesity is about a hell of a lot more than people eating junk food, just as other addictions are about more than people drinking lots of alcohol or taking lots of drugs. Medical professionals know this extremely well, and the services currently available to address the long term problems causing addiction are stretched beyond belief.

A lot of the people (the obese and addicts) are on benefits due to self inflicted illnesses. Nobody forces people to take drugs, drink alcohol or gorge on unhealthy foods.

I have much more sympathy for those people with illnesses that they have through no fault or contribution of their own. I really can't have sympathy for people losing benefits due to not seeking treatment for obesity or addictions when people who have missing limbs or complex illnesses that they have been born with have lost their benefits due to some nitwit atos advisor assessing them as fit to work.