Article on people claiming PIP, figures, top 50 conditions

https://www.lancs.live/news/cost-of-living/50-pip-conditions-could-see-25873700

 

Does anyone know how “CFS” is classified in the DWP’s top level taxonomy of disorders? Neurological, hopefully.

I’m still keeping an eye out for the first think tank to suggest means-testing PIP, and/or ratcheting down the qualifying characteristics.

This IFS report https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/fi...has-doubled-in-a-year-IFS-report-R233 (1).pdf fortunately stops short of such suggestions, but it would provide backing for anyone so minded. And it seems to use some sort of disorder taxonomy, but it’s not clear whether that is its own, or the DWP’s.

 

I think it might come under muskeloskeletal, but not certain.

 

Question asked in Parliament in 2021.

Question. "To ask Her Majesty's Government why the Department for Work and Pensions classifies ME/CFS as a musculoskeletal disease for the purposes of statistics and for the guidance and training of their health professionals, rather than as a neurological disease."

Part answer. "The issue of classification for coding and statistical purposes has recently been brought to our attention. In light of this we are currently exploring moving ME/CFS from the musculoskeletal to neurological section for coding purposes."

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2021-04-13/HL14895/

 

But at least, thank goodness, not psychiatric.

 

Their biggest category is a grab bag of things they don't want to record and instead mislabel. Smart system. Basically optimizing for maximum costs and wastefulness, and it doesn't even count all the things they have to neglect for this lousy system to appear to function.

When the entire point of this ideology is to cut costs. It's almost like trying to achieve a goal with a flawed system doesn't actually achieve this goal and instead you get more of whatever flaw you used to make it happen. If it's a whole lot of lying, then you get a whole lot more lying.

Surprised to see fibromyalgia so much larger than CFS, but likely a lot of those are chronic pain from other causes, another grab bag. Really lousy idea to miscategorize data straight at the input, it's hard to do worse than this, but it seems the BPS model requires confusion and ignorance to continue.

If I were in charge of those things I would instead go with trying to understand and solve those mystery categories, instead of watching them grow and continue to eat lives and money. In a sense it's like having a huge debt you have to pay huge interests towards, even as they grow the debt every year. It's almost impressive how this is really built to maximize all the costs while producing the worst outcomes, medical and financial.

Basically works as well as a one-party state with a monoculture that doesn't listen to anyone outside of the bubble. Funny that.

 

Are some people still on DLA?

 

I don’t see how the DWP’s bracketing together of anxiety and depressive disorders is anything to do with BPS models, or why it is automatically suspicious.

There is lots of comorbidity, the pathways to getting a formal psychiatric diagnosis are wayward, and the assessment is (at least in theory) designed to establish what people can and cannot do, rather than precisely why.

A family member has had PIP consistently for several years while her psychiatric diagnoses have veered from bipolar, to anxiety and depression, to BPD and then back to depression. The very vagueness and imprecision of psychiatry makes a big bucket for these disorders more reasonable for work capability assessments.

 

Health, disability and care
"There were 4.1 million people claiming either PIP or DLA at August 2021, an increase of 160,000 during the last year."

"Since 2013, working age adults have been moving from DLA to PIP. This has led to an increase in the number of people claiming PIP and a decrease in the number of people claiming DLA over time.

At August 2021, there were 2.8 million people claiming PIP, and 1.3 million people claiming DLA. The number of people claiming PIP rose by 200,000 while DLA claims fell by 37,000 in the year to August 2021. Transfers from DLA to PIP were affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic – see the Background information note for more details."

 

DLA figures for CFS for 2010-12 for England & Wales
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121219/text/121219w0001.htm
https://twitter.com/user/status/1609979103461126145

 

The number given for PIP claimants with CFS is low - just 10% of the of the often quoted upper limit of the numbers of PwME in the UK, 20% of the number suggest by ME Research based on Nacul et al: How many people have ME/CFS?

There are complications however - PIP is not limited by Retirement status and is claimable by anyone over the age of 16 with care needs. And as above there are 1.3 million people receiving the previous DLA benefit - pro rata we might expect 10,850 PwME receiving DLA.

PIP/DLA can be paid in addition to the out of work sickness/disability Benefit ESA however not everyone receiving ESA will qualify for DLA/PIP - only 1.8 million people receive ESA so it's a much smaller population than as paid DLA/PIP (4.1 million) however it's possible that there is a proportionally higher % of PwME on ESA without DLA/PIP than ESA + DLA/PIP. Even so PwME receiving UK sickness/disability benefits seems notably low relative to the estimated prevalence rates - interesting to compare Fibromyalgia rates for PIP which is 5.4 times higher.

Re: DWP classification this is important for Government stats but the PIP application process depends on GP/Specialist diagnosis and has no impact on individual benefit awards - other perhaps than in potential prejudice within the system.

 

Yes sorry I missed that particular conditionality Getting PIP after you’ve reached State Pension age Those making a claim after they've hit retirement age (currently 66), can only claim Attendance Allowance

All the data suggests that the majority of PwME would have become ill prior to reaching retirement age and would therefore have been able to claim DLA/PIP and continue to qualify after age 66 - though there would be difficulty for those were were not ill enough to qualify for DLA/PIP when they were younger but had their ME/CFS worsen after age 66.

Attendance Allowance

"At August 2021, there were 1.5 million Attendance Allowance (AA) claimants, a decrease of 19,000 from August 2020. 1.4 million claimants were receiving a payment and 120,000 (8%) were entitled to the benefit but not receiving payment. As with DLA above, AA payments can be temporarily suspended for instance, if the claimant is in hospital."

 

Children under 16 are, as are people born before a particular date in the 1940s (my former neighbour is still on it, as he'd reached retirement age when PIP was introduced). There may still be some (ETA: working-age] adults who haven't yet been "invited" to claim PIP, but presumably not many?