Hundreds of thousands of claimants are to lose their disability benefits as Britain’s bloated welfare budget takes the strain of public spending cuts.
More than £1billion is due to be slashed from the disability living allowance bill, forcing around 400,000 to seek work. ...
[Chancellor George] Osborne also plans to introduce tough new medical assessments for the three million claiming disability living allowance.
US has a big problem with phony disability beneficiaries, too.
ReplyDeleteDefinition of disability needs to be strengthened.
Age requirement (50) needs to be imposed.
Attorney fees need to be slashed.
Phony doctors must be prosecuted and imprisoned.
Perhaps even more interesting than the lack of a COLA, is the fact that the Bend points that are used to determine a person's benefit amount have decreased for the first time ever. This means that a person that becomes disabled or attains age 62 in Jan 2011 will actually get a lower benefit than a person who does so in Dec 2010. $5-10 a month less on average by my calculations.
ReplyDeleteA#2--Thanks for bringing this up. This is yet another way that the problem of what to do in deflationary times will make itself felt. The newly entitled beneficiaries may not be aware of this, but their advocates clearly will. It would be risky indeed for any politician to argue that lowering benefits now is a good thing, if it ever could be, something I strongly deny. Nancy Ortiz
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