The Department for Work and Pensions has just announced the 10 private companies on the shortlist to deliver the personal independence payment (PIP) assessments, which everyone receiving disability living allowance will have to undergo from next year when DLA is replaced by PIPs. With 3.2 million captive customers, not to mention a monopoly on all new claimants, it’s not hard to see the appeal of the contract for profit-hungry companies untroubled by the ethics of slashing 20% from the money provided to disabled people to help them meet some of the basic expenses that living with a disability inevitably incurs.
Author Archives: wendy
Family GPs are ordered to cut number of patients referred to hospital to earn extra cash
- Fears patients are having to bear the brunt of NHS ‘efficiency savings’
PUBLISHED: 00:02, 2 May 2012 | UPDATED: 08:31, 2 May 2012
Family doctors are being ordered to slash the numbers of patients they send to hospital to earn extra cash.
Six out of ten GPs said they face ‘inappropriate’ pressure to refer fewer patients and potentially deny them the best care.
The controversial scheme can pay out almost £9,000 a year to surgeries.
GPs could get extra cash for not sending patients to hospitals for treatment
It started last May when ministers brought in a series of targets enabling GPs to be rewarded for cutting the number of patients sent to hospital specialists or A&E departments.
However, a poll of 667 doctors found that 60 per cent were facing ‘inappropriate demands’ from managers.
How can it be right to profit from disability?
Disability living allowance is being replaced with personal independence payment assessments, and private companies are queueing up to cash in
Atos has been shortlisted for the PIP contract, despite being criticised for its handling of work capability assessments.
Parents tell of their grief over 19-year-old who ‘didn’t realise how beautiful she was’
‘Eating disorders take a huge toll on the body over a period of time.’
- Despite stunning good looks, teenager never believed she was attractive enough for the modelling world
- She developed anorexia and bulimia at the age of 16 and the illnesses left her too tired to work
- The model died in her sleep at her grandmother’s house of suspected heart failure
By Andrew Levy
PUBLISHED: 17:20, 30 April 2012 | UPDATED: 01:20, 1 May 2012
At 19, with several teen magazine cover shoots behind her and the prospect of a lucrative modelling career ahead, she appeared to have the world at her feet.
But while to others she seemed a confident and beautiful young woman, Bethaney Wallace was facing a crippling struggle with eating disorders which saw her weight plunge to under 7st – and which finally claimed her life.
Doctors believe that, over the three years since she developed anorexia and bulimia, her condition had weakened her heart and it gave out as she slept.
Bethaney, left at a shoot, was forced to step away from modelling when her illnesses left her too weak to work
Self conscious youth: Bethaney modelled from the age of 12 – but she never saw herself as attractive and was anorexic and bulimic by 16
Yesterday, her father Clive, 47, said: ‘She lost her self-esteem.
‘She would say she was fat but she was so beautiful – she didn’t realise how beautiful she was. She had up days and down days. It was like Jekyll and Hyde.
‘I tried to warn her that her organs would fail but she just said: “Don’t be silly”. If you mentioned food it would start an argument.’
Her mother Cathy, 42, added that she felt helpless because Bethaney couldn’t be persuaded to seek professional advice.
‘It was so hard to get help,’ the housewife said. ‘I went to the doctor’s a few times on my own.
‘I asked them to call her in for something else and then bring up the eating disorder. But Beth was not a child so I could not force her to get help.
