Should we welcome the end of the sick note?

[摘要] I don't recall the exact moment when I realised that the sick note system was doomed. But I do remember the time before the 1992 general election when patients started to turn up asking to be certified as unfit for work on medical grounds, indicating that they had been sent by the local benefits agency where they were currently registered as unemployed. Unemployment was then still a sensitive political issue, and the government, already notorious for its manipulation of the jobless figures, had discovered that the unemployment rate could be reduced still further if more of those out of work could be redefined as sick. A few months later, the election won, and another government department found itself struggling with the mounting cost of paying out long-term benefits to this cynically created army of invalids. Some of the same patients were sent back, now under pressure to be certified as fit for work.

[学科分类] 卫生学