Unfit To Practise

So, on top of everything else, the General Medical Council is investigating, and in a couple of cases has already disciplined, several of the doctors employed by Atos, the private company engaged to assess claims for sickness and disability benefits while paid by the number of claims that it rejects and by the number of existing claimants that it forces off the books. All things considered, it is no surprise that it rejects a large number of claims while forcing a large number of existing claimants off the books. As for people who withdraw their claims, they do so because has made them too ill to carry on.

It is hard to get Incapacity Benefit or whatever it is now called (it was, by the way, invented by Margaret Thatcher as part of her gigantic expansion of benefit dependency), and it is almost impossible to get something like Disability Living Allowance. The question is not why so many people are making "fraudulent" claims, but why so many people really are that ill. What has changed in Britain since the Seventies?