Should cancer patients have to face welfare tests during chemotherapy?

Stupid question, isn't it? Not if you're a nasty, vicious and utterly malevolent member of our Tory government. (I won't say 'Tory-dominated' any more because the Lib Dems are invisible.)

Thousands of seriously ill cancer patients will be forced to take medical tests and face "back to work" interviews, despite assurances from ministers that they would not make it harder for the sick to get welfare.

Buried in a report to ministers by Prof Malcolm Harrington, the government adviser on testing welfare recipients, are proposals to force cancer patients who are undergoing intravenous chemotherapy to prove they are too ill to work by taking part in the controversial work capability assessment to determine whether someone is eligible for benefits.

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The reader comments which follow the article are quite interesting........

We do the same in Australia.

All Welfare payments are means tested and almost all medical conditions are reviewed by health professionals who are assessing the impact of the medical condition on daily life and welfare recipient's work capacity, with a view to referrals for specialist assistance such as rehabilitation, disability employment assistance etc...

There are only two kinds of medical condition that are not reviewed. Those which are identified as terminal within two years and those who have a profound intellectual disability.

It seems to work fairly, but not always.

There's nothing fair in making a person who is receiving chemotherapy - probably feeling sick and with hair falling out - take a test to see if they're fit for work. They're not fit, and they don't need any extra stress. There is evidence that many cancer patients are very keen to return to work as soon as they feel able, as to do so indicates that their condition is improving.

This is just another obscenity from the spiteful and callous Tory government which the UK nearly elected last year. Instead of hassling the very sick, the Tories should be chasing up the tax which has been avoided and/or evaded by their very rich friends.

Some patients will probably die just to embarass Ian Duncan Smith.

I am lucky, the Chemo is not pulling my hair out! BUT! It does scary things - Sleeplessness, then 2 days like rip van winkle.
14 months ago, I was given 6 months to live "Get your arrangements made" in that casual matter of fact voice that has said these words so many times, that their import no longer concerns/ involves the medico speaking them!

SO I have not so long to get to 2 years (God Willing)

The actions of these Bories is so disgusting that compared to them, the WITCH is Snow White!!

Keep fighting the good fight, astra. My thoughts and hopes are with you, and I would hug you tight if I could be there.

astra , my thoughts and prayers go out to you. ..

Although I do not live across the pond I feel this is so wrong on so many levels. To ask someone going through cancer treatments being ask to test to see if they can work is horrid. Of course they can not work..They are ill and the treatment can be debilitating how dare someone do that to them..

You can see the difficulty for Ministers in trying to control government spending. Every time they come up with an idea, it turns out to have an adverse effect on PEOPLE.

If only people could be removed from the equation.

If only people could be removed from the equation.

Passengers, Customers and Clients ARE such an inconvenience!!

Passengers, Customers and Clients ARE such an inconvenience!!

Oddly enough, you're not that far from (in my opinion at least) the truth. The recession right now and the "jobless recovery" that seems to be taking place is indicative of something I think few have really caught on to yet. We in the West always believed that our economy is consumer-driven, and for most of our history, that has been the case. But prestigious colleges like Harvard and Yale have been offering degrees in a very strange subject - Financial Engineering.

I think our economies are moving away from the traditional consumer-driven model and moving into a new area - the financially engineered economy. I won't claim to understand it completely, but it involves using extremely complex higher-order maths to simply create money from money without having to sell or manufacture a single product. This will throw most people into poverty, but they've long ago stopped caring about that. Money is money whether they get it from selling goods and services or if they get it from mathematical equations.

A Christian prohibition on profit from money 'without working' made banking sinful. Though Pope Leo the Great forbade charging interest on loans by canon law, it was not forbidden to take collateral on loans. Pawn shops thus operate on the basis of a contract that fixes in advance the 'fine' for not respecting the nominal term of the 'interest free' loan, or alternatively, may structure a sale-repurchase by the 'borrower' where the interest is implicit in the repurchase price. Similar conventions exist in modern Islamic banking.

There may be more to Religion than meets the eye.

Some things are known only to those representing themselves to be more than three-hundred years of age.

Just when you thought this diabolical government couldn’t get any worse:-

"Some long-term sick and disabled people face being forced to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time or have their benefits cut under plans being drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Mental health professionals and charities have said they fear those deemed fit to undertake limited amounts of work under a controversial assessment process could suffer further harm to their health if the plans go ahead.

The new policy, outlined by DWP officials in meetings with disabilities groups, is due to be announced after legal changes contained in clause 54 of the Welfare Reform Bill have made their way through Parliament.

The policy could mean that those on Employment and Support Allowance who have been placed in the work-related activity group (WRAG) could be compelled to undertake work experience for charities, public bodies and high-street retailers. The WRAG group includes those who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and some of those with mental health issues.

In official notes from a meeting on 1 December, DWP advisers revealed they were not intending to put a time limit on the work experience placements."

From an article by Shiv Malik, the whole of which can be read here:-
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The overall number of people claiming DLA has risen from 1.1m in 1992 to 3.2m today, with the current bill standing at £12bn. Nearly three-quarters claim the benefit indefinitely, with no regular check to see if their lifestyles have changed.

Ivan.....this is a dramatic increase over a 20 year period. Do you not think that this needs to be looked at so the genuine needy can be looked after properly, or are you happy that there is likely to be a significant number of claimants who are just playing the system at yours and my expence

Most taxpayers would prefer not to subsidise the work-shy, and the Government's intention of weeding out scroungers meets with general approval.

The problem lies in the overheated corridors of Whitehall, where the Civil Service hold the ring, but continuously swing from one extreme to the other.
Ever since the end of WWII, the dead hand of the Mandarins has kept the money tap almost closed, except when a new Government sets a change of policy in response to some newspaper campaign, and the pendulum swings the other way. Inevitably too far the other way.

The number of prisoners in British jails is at an allmost all time high.

MOST of them are fit, healthy, and have regular checkups.

Put THEM to work



OH!

I forgot, THAT would be against their human rights!

With unemployment at a record high amongst the HONEST jobseekers outside Prison, that's an idea that might need a bit more thought.

Ivan wrote:Stupid question, isn't it? Not if you're a nasty, vicious and utterly malevolent member of our Tory government. (I won't say 'Tory-dominated' any more because the Lib Dems are invisible.)

Thousands of seriously ill cancer patients will be forced to take medical tests and face "back to work" interviews, despite assurances from ministers that they would not make it harder for the sick to get welfare.

Buried in a report to ministers by Prof Malcolm Harrington, the government adviser on testing welfare recipients, are proposals to force cancer patients who are undergoing intravenous chemotherapy to prove they are too ill to work by taking part in the controversial work capability assessment to determine whether someone is eligible for benefits.

For more details:-
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The reader comments which follow the article are quite interesting........

Read that story in the guardian today the way it is looking is if you have terminal cancer and your doctor or consultant reckons you have 6 months to live its back too work for you even though you are still receiving treatment for that cancer IMHO HOW LOW CAN THEY GO AS LOW AS THEY DEEM.

Come on guys we all should have realised that this Shylock government need to ahve it's pound of flesh even from the dying.......but then again the rich are to be exempt.....

If I DO get called for a "Medical?" things will be quite intresting.

With the Meniere's thing, barometric pressure interupts my balance, I usually get 20 - 30 minutes warning. (The violent and sudden weather changes you see on USA and Africa seldom hit us here.)

This in turn increases the Tinnitus

I am deaf in my right ear.

Since the Bowel thing, a call to the toilets, means BE THERE IN 2 MINUTES!!
or else!

SO! Call centre, Street work for a charity, indeed MOST things are out of scope.

I suppose I'll be accused of being 'Difficult', 'Intransigent' and just plain frosty. Why change the habits of a lifetime?


For all the youngsters on here who espouse the 'Tory Way,' since WHEN was a job turning up for FREE classed as a job?

The sick, lame, ill, are being treated like the unemployed back 35 years ago! Just "put them anywhere to fullfill the job creation figures"
Car Plants, Railways andall of industry were treated the same way!

EDIT

AND Do not say that the young offspring of Bankers and Politicians learn the ropes 'working' for free in some of the city institutions. It will benefit them in the future and 'stand them in good stead'

Cancer takes no prisoners, does no one no favours, so what guarantee of a future do we, who are terminally ill have?

astra. I'm sure Duncan Smith and his friends at ATOS (aptly named because they don't give...) would have no hesitation in declaring you for for work. A number of people who died soon after their interviews were declared fit; on one occasion, the relatives of the deceased received notification to that effect on the day of his funeral.

This cruel, disgusting government makes me ashamed to be British. I judge a society by how it treats its poor, sick, old and disabled, and on that criteria the UK stinks nowadays.

Thank's Ivan.



I still await a decision on the £400 that I am owe the tax man for when I was in reciept in incapacity benefit, in 2007/2008tax year, and the Ministry were deducting tax at source! when G Broon changed my income tax from 10% to 22% and THEY failed to take that into account.

Better to be sick in the Louisiana Swamps, then I can go play with an Alligator!

The somewhat odd thing here is that, when you get the 'DS 1500' form, the ministry pay out the Disability Living Allowance and Higher Mobility payment without means test. So now I am to feel at blame for the Government's once upon a time soft heartedness!

We'll have the Proof of that when Insurance Assessors begin to send motoring-accident whiplash claimants there.

I think the disabled and sick would have a great deal more confidence in the Work Capability Assessment if it was carried out by an organisation that had no profit motive and no targets to meet. It might be good if that organisation had a vast number of experts that understood the conditions of those disabled and sick. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that organisation could be owned by us rather than private enterprise. The only candidate that I can think of would be the NHS.

The NHS know the conditions suffered by the disabled and sick and know if someone is faking it, if there is what we might see as a disagreement then a second doctor consultant could be asked his opinion too. The only downside is the cost of these experts is the cost.

As the moment we have a system where ATOS employ what they call Health Care Professionals (HCP). These HCP's might have no expertise in the disability of the claimant and are basically looking for the answers to questions that are presented to them on the screen of a computer. When we have Dental Nurses assessing someone for depression there is something wrong with the system. When those HCP's are put under pressure to declare 88% of those claimants as fit for work regardless of their condition or get a written warning. Remember three warnings and you're sacked.  

Heretic

I have been helping two ladies that I know one 84years old and her daughter who is disabled who is 56 years old, and the daughter has received a letter to go for a medical check-up to see if she is still entitled to her disability living allowance or she will be put on jobseekers allowance.
She cannot possibly work, she cannot write or fill in forms or understand them, she had meningitis as a child which means she does not understand things very well and when they tried last time under thatcher to make her work she injured herself therefore she cannot move her hands properly.