Broken Battery Updates

Income support for the cost of this lady's disability is denied, since she cannot travel to assessments, or when she could it is not safe - with such high risk of another catastrophic, long-term decline - she won't risk it.

It seems this Swiss system is allowed to reject a doctors confirmation that travel is not safe. So she relies on 1 hour a day from a nurse (who prepares her artifical tube feed etc), sees no-one else, has no other help.

Some time ago, in the UK, the assessments for disability income support were farmed out to make a profit, although the decisions were still made by the government Department.

It was a USA system, promoted and imported by big USA contractors.

Previously, decisions were based on in-house assessments in view of documented evidence, all decided on the paperwork submitted. If necessary to meet, the government's own doctors did a home visit.

Suddenly there was a big fuss about "face-to-face" assessment demanding that disabled people travel to be assessed by a middleman.

This scandal-ridden commercial contractor tried and tried to tell people there was no exception to this rule but that was not true.

Some thousands of people were exempted and the decision could still be made on paperwork. There was limited provision for home visits by the commercial contractor.

The contractor tried and tried to tell people that there was no provision for home visits. It told people not to submit medical evidence: if wanted the contractor would ask for it. It misinformed the government too.

If told travel is impossible, it could agree to cancel appts, then send taxis on the days of the appts, then tell the government its a no-show.

So a lot of disability income support was refused or cancelled, without any assessment of the paperwork. That is how to make a profit and free up enough budget to pay an unsupervised, unaccountable middleman.

Eventually some saints still tucked away inside the government made a new rule: the contractor had to upload all documents submitted to them for the government to track and monitor, limiting these dirty tricks.
 
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Some outsourcing contracts get cancelled and taken back in-house due to mayhem. But the contracts on disabled people remain very profitable

In other countries the business of farming out beggars is funded by the beggars, not by the government. Some welfare states are plagued by a corrupt tradition, monetising essential services and welfare.

Personally I see no benefit in outsourcing public services and welfare, then turning a blind eye to the pinching.

I don't know if Switzerland is farming out its disabiity assessments, or if the assessments and decisions are all done in-house.

It is not tenable for contractors and/or the government to continue ignoring medical exemptions from work and/or travel.

Come the pandemic, all the "face to face" assessments stopped. We all reverted to remote assessments based on paperwork. This was more convenient for many other systems, too, even when lockdown was lifted.
 


English translation of a post from German public broadcaster NDR

Original post:


Full 4-minute report:
 
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