There is a problem with some doctors and that is a fact one incident i am aware of was an eighty year old woman with severe arthritis who had lived on the ground floor of her house for fifteen years. When she was visited by a doctor working on behalf of the dwp he asked her to climb the stairs and she refused stating she couldn't so there was no point he then put her down as uncooperative.
I do not however support the views of one poster here that they are on the take or corrupt in anyway. I think the guidelines they have to follow are so open to interpretaion at some points and closed at others as to make the whole process as confusing for them as for us the claimants. Right now we have a system that is failing those in need failing those trying to police it and failing the doctors who are tasked with trying to get to the truth.
This is deliberate on the part of the government to cut the number of successful claims and to minimise a problem that is far more widespread then they like to admit. My own gp has expressed many times to me his complete disgust with the current system and the way it forces everyone involved in it to act and think and he is a very experienced gp.
What needs to happen is for the truth to be accepted by all party's yes there are abusers just as there are in the tax system or in fact any system that exists but you cannot build an entire process around those small minoritys of people. Benefit claimants in my own opinion do have to be prepared to be scrutinised and most genuine claimants i have met including myself have absolutely no problem with that. As long as when it happens we are not then branded with the "fraud" brush that both the media and our own damn government is so happy to label most on benefit with.
I am grateful to all those in this country that are able too and do work because without them we couldn't have any system to help the vulbnerable in our society. They do whether some like it or not have a right to know that they tax they pay is indeed going to people that deserve it and is not funding lazy workshy scroungers.
A fair system that meets the needs of those in need whilst protecting the taxpayer in the country from abuse is vey much needed but it has to be done the right way. That means no government can misuse the benefit system when it suits them to manipulate statistics as this labour government has certainly done. It means no government can use benefit as a convinient thing to divert attention from other things that are going wrong and it means the media has to stop highlighting individuals and representing them as some form of majority of claimant.
In short it will take some one\party with more courage then i see in any of them right now before we can start to have a system that is fair to all involved whilst meeting the needs of the vulnerable but i can hope
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