Is it just me or does everything have a price nowadays?
The BBC is running this story about “fit notes” I have made my position clear on NHS Behind the Headlines and it isn’t a pretty sight.
But it’s not just that, it is the interminable “cost” of everything, sickness from work costs £100 Billion, smokers cost £3.7 Billion, and drinkers cost £20 Billion, old age costs-etc.
Have we become so bloody mercenary in this country that we have to spout stats all the time?
Sickness isn’t about money, it’s about people, and so is unemployment, but all we hear is that it costs, so and so. And how the costs could be reduced, not how the people can be helped.
There are platitudes from the Government saying how long term sickness or unemployment can make people “socially excluded” or how they cannot fulfil their “potential”, but what they really mean is-quote from Dim Carol Black “Dame Carol's report highlighted the impact on economic productivity of improving occupational health and reducing the number of people, currently more than 2.7 million of whom, are on incapacity benefits.”
That is the crux of all these “new” ideas that seem to vomit from the “brains” of the “experts” MONEY.
This is from a government that pissed away hundreds of billions with nothing to show for it except an economy that is down the drain.
And who does the Government expect to “police” the new “fit notes”, the GPs.
A patients’ relationship with their GP should be one of trust, this “fit note” idea is going to interfere with that relationship, with the patient perhaps not being as truthful as they might about the effects of their illness.
The GPs are going to be compromised, how does a GP know what a patient is capable of? They are there to diagnose, treat and refer, not to do the Governments’ job for them.
As usual the Labour “Government” have come up with another half-arsed, half thought out idea, and to be mercenary, how much will that cost?
Angus
