I was sent this email from the DPAC - and I believe it needs to be seen by as many people as possible!
Please take the time to read it?
A Tale of two Models: Disabled People vs Unum,
Atos, Government and Disability Charities: Debbie Jolly
Posted:
08 Apr 2012 02:57 PM PDT
One of the main advocates
of the bio-psychosocial model, Lord Freud (Westminster’s Minister for welfare
reform) claims that it is based on evidence. It is not. It is a right wing
model led by profit and the market. It incorporates the worst aspects of
neo-liberalism. It targets disabled people and ridiculously claims that we can
think ourselves out of being disabled. Its underlying theme repeats the mantra
that ‘work will set you free’. But this is not about work, despite the endless
rhetoric; this model is an ideological cover for attacking disabled people and
reducing every single right to financial support that has been achieved.
Additional fringe benefits are provided to the insurance market of Unum, to the
profits of Atos and to the big Disability Charities who all capitalise on the
new notions of risk being imposed on disabled people. We can identify a clear
pattern for the construction of the bio-psychosocial model, and its advocates.
It features:
●‘Academics’ in the pay of
the insurance company Unum
●The genesis of the Work
Capability Assessment guided by Unum and Atos,
●Atos’ imposition of mass
reassessments
● Successive governments
●Key players in the
Department of Work and Pensions
● The big Disability
Charities.
We can also identify a
clear pattern for the construction and advocates of the social model of
disability. The story features disabled activists some of whom were institutionalised in a Leonard Cheshire
home, disabled academics, disabled activists and disabled peoples’
organisations and groups run and controlled by disabled people who led the
political challenges to individual models of disability and who continue to do
so. Which model seems better so far?
While successive
governments were delivering a stream of white papers apparently dedicated to
improving the life chances of disabled people the revenge of the
bio-psychosocial model and welfare reform (read welfare destruction) was
quietly being prepared behind our backs by the state and their market partners.
The following explains why some disability campaigners were and are wrong to
abandon the social model of disability and how the rhetoric behind the
bio-psychosocial model is one of the keys to understanding the 21st century
ideological attacks on disabled peoples’ lives.
Part One
The Social Model of Disability Basics: why it’s
nothing to do with the bio-psychosocial model
The social model came into
being through a letter to the Guardian from Paul Hunt[1], the early work of
UPIAS (Union of Physically Impaired against Segregation) a document written by
Vic Finkelstein[2] and other activists. They were institutionalised in a
Leonard Cheshire institution. The UPIAS document and its premise were taken
forward in the 1980s and 1990s by disabled activists and academics including
Mike Oliver[3] and Colin Barnes[4]. Paul Abberley[5] also produced a seminal
piece on ‘The Concept of Oppression and
the Development of a Social Theory of Disability’. The social model of
disability was also taken forward by activists, campaigners and those who set
up some of the first Centres of Independent Living (CILs)
.
The social model
perspective has been used widely in the UK as answer to the sociological
theories and common place mis-understandings on issues of disability being
designated as entirely medical/individual attributes without reference to the
environment, to the barriers that disabled people face, or the rights that they
are being denied. Examples include: the American conservative sociologist
Talcot Parsons who theorised the ‘Sick Role’ in the 1950s, and the
International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps
(ICIDH). Parsons suggested that ‘the
sick role’ gave individuals the opportunity to ‘opt out ‘of society, and elicit
sympathy from others which brought them certain social benefits.
However, this was
perceived as a deviant role-according to Parsons the individual was at fault,
merely exercising a form of deviance for particular rewards-they could quite
easily change their attitude and function within society adequately. In
addition, the first classification from the World Health Organisation (WHO)
produced The International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and
Handicaps (ICIDH). This concentrated purely on medical factors and ‘handicaps’.
It was later remodelled to include supposed interaction with social factors and
renamed International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health
(ICF). Yet, it has never fully achieved the explanation of the interaction
between impairment and disability.
In contrast, disability
activists using the social model perspective argue it is how society treats
disabled people that create the main problem. The experience of disability is
not exclusively about the individual or the individual’s attitudes. The
experience of disability is an interaction with actions of non disabled people,
planners, governments, employers and others. People need educating on what it
is really like to be disabled and the many barriers that disabled people face
in their everyday lives. They need to understand those barriers which prevent
disabled people having the same opportunities and life chances as their non disabled
peers.
The social model does not
focus on disabled people as victims of their physiology, whether physical,
cognitive or otherwise, nor as vulnerable, helpless individuals but as people
who are disabled by attitudes, the environment, design, working patterns and by
those individuals who see disabled people as unworthy. The social model also
offers a way to organise politically against the principles of social and
economic exclusion, and oppression in a disabilist society. It gives a critique of all that has gone
before based on individualism and the market. It also argues that disabled
people must be at the centre of voicing their own experiences. The social model
was constructed by disabled people, not medical ‘experts’ , not policy makers,
not social workers, not disability charities, not service providers, nor
governments, nor private companies profiting from disability[6].
The Social Model: misunderstandings, misuse and
other detractions
Disabled People against
Cuts (DPAC) advocates the social model as do many others. Yet, DPAC has
received criticism for insisting on working from the perspective of the social
model. For example, the coalition governments’ use of the term social model in
consultations regarding the proposed change from Disability Living Allowance to
Personal Independence Payment (PIP) has caused some people to reject the social
model: what’s the point of supporting something that is being used to limit our
rights-but the coalition government don’t understand, care or really know what
the social model is. This was evident to anyone that read through the questions
in the first PIP consultation.
The social model has been
rejected by some academics as being out dated or not quite fashionable enough:
they claim it is better to write of discourse, and embrace the ‘subject’
(individual). From the ‘ivory towers’ it may be, but how can this version ever
realistically contribute directly to social policy or to peoples’ lives? The
social model is rejected because it is considered masculine, it talks about
this thing called society, and it talks about ‘social oppression’-perceived as
an outdated Marxist term. The social model is rejected because it talks about
impairment, people don’t like to think of themselves as impaired, and anyway,
some say: isn’t the social model all about physical impairments? What about
mental health? What about learning difficulties? Disabled feminists also
criticised the social model for what they suggested was the social model’s
exclusion of the body, but it is in the body politic that this model has its
greatest power. At times criticisms are academic (in both senses), overall it’s
extremely damaging, as the criticisms are often based on misconceptions of the
social model and miss what the perspective offers for changing disabled
peoples’ lives (see Barnes[7]).
The Coalition and New
Labour before them had some very fertile ground to make their attacks on a set
of people who were divided on their own histories, who appeared to be against
their own founding activists and their own collective political identity. At
the same time, as noted, neither new Labour nor the Coalition understood, cared
or really knew what the social model really meant. They did know that the
social model was used as successful tool to establish rights for disabled
people.
This is why recent
governments and government departments have used the term without any notion of
the motivation, history, or content nor any care for the outcomes. Governments
claim they speak with some disabled peoples’ organisations, some disabled
activists, but mainly governments’ speak with the multi million pound
disability charities. The big disability charities also use the term social
model to give the illusion that they understand disabled people and can speak
on behalf of disabled people. They never could and they still can’t. It is for
disabled people to speak for themselves individually, through their own
user-led organisations and through their own grass root groups.
What the Social Model
Perspective did for Disabled People
The social model
perspective was used very successfully by campaigners, protesters, advocates,
activists and Centres for Independent Living (CILs) to move disabled people in
the UK to a position that was the envy of many European countries in terms of
UK support for disabled people.
Was it this perspective
and its promotion that brought us:
● The Independent Living Fund (ILF) –now closed to all new applicants
since 2010 by the Coalition, while existing applicants are left wondering what
will happen to their support
● Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to pay for the extra costs of
being disabled -now being replaced by Personal Independence Payment and rounds
of reassessment by the Coalition government
● Incapacity Benefit -now changed to Employment Support Allowance and
rounds of reassessment by Atos put in place by New Labour and made more
stringent by the Coalition government
● Access to Work to help with extra costs of working and to, in
theory, provide extra support to those that needed it –recently we have seen
cut-backs on Access to Work with the tightening of criteria and more costs
transferred to the employer rather than the government under the Coalition.
● Direct Payments to pay for personal assistants to aid independent
living through financial support from local authorities (L.A.s) -now cut back
as L.A.s restrict access through more punitive eligibility criteria because of
central government cuts of up to 40% to L.A. budgets
●The Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA) –now we have a diluted replacement including all
discriminated groups called the Equality Act (2010) put in place by New Labour
and further diluted by the Coalition government.
These things originally
opened up independent living for disabled people; social model arguments
affected social policy, housing, information, education, transport, design,
peer support, advocacy and attitudes towards disabled people. Few would claim
that the social model was a panacea for all the problems that disabled people
faced, disabled people were still fighting for better rights, improvements on
what we had, and better access before the current onslaught from the Coalition.
However, to say that the social model and the social model perspective did
nothing to change the lives of disabled people is an insult to the generations
of disabled activists before us that fought for change. All those that pushed
those extra rights forward were social model advocates who wanted more
independence for themselves and for disabled people, they wanted to educate on
a better understanding of the social and economic oppression that disabled
people faced. Yet, New Labour, the Conservatives and a host of other actors
were working on removing those gains and more from disabled people and disabled
children from as early as 1992.
Those disabled people that
now have a public platform and criticise or dismiss the social model are
disparaging the very thing that gave them that platform in the first instance.
We can identify a clear pattern for the advocates and history of the social
model: disabled people, some of whom were institutionalised, disabled
academics, disabled activists and disabled peoples’ organisations run and
controlled by disabled people. We can
also identify a clear pattern for the bio-psychosocial model rhetoric and its
advocates.
Part two
The Bio-psychosocial Model Basics: why it’s nothing
to do with the social model
There are a few references
explaining where the original version of the bio-psychosocial model came from.
Some cite George Engel[8] others claim that it is an outcome of the
International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICF) [9] Gill
Thorton[10] describes the model from a medical approach, while clearly
identifying the vulgarisation of its later use as a tool in getting disabled
people back to work:
Briefly put, it is a
theory that seeks to broaden the perspective on illness, by taking into account
not only the biological, but also psychological and social factors which may
have an influence on sickness, and consequently on the course that healing
takes. The acknowledged value of this approach, when used for the benefit of
the patient, is that it allows for the identification of non-biological
influences which may interfere with an individual’s capacity to heal.
However, it seems that
Parsons’ ‘sick role’ and of the disabled person as deviant comes closest to the
rhetoric of the Coalition government. So rather than identify who or what the
original source of the bio-psychosocial model might be, we need to look at its
promotion and how it has been used to justify the rhetoric that ‘work makes you
well’ and that ‘work is good for you’. A DWP Press release from October
2011[11] shows the ways in which Freud (Minister for welfare reform) justifies
the new era of the bio-psychosocial. He is speaking from the perversely titled
‘Health and Well- Being’ conference.
Key speakers at the
conference included Dr Catherine Hannaway trained in the U.S. in ‘improvement
methodologies’ by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement whose former President
and Chief Executive Officer was Donald M. Berwick administrator for the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services insurance. Dr Bill Gunnyeon CBE, Director
for Health, Work and Wellbeing and Chief Medical Advisor DWP:a regular ‘expert’
in House of Commons groups, and like Freud an apologist for Atos testing and
the change from DLA to PIP. Also Samantha Wortley, Health and Safety Advisor at
the University of Derby: a university running accredited courses for Atos
health practitioners, and Disability Charity RNIB’s Philip Connolly, Employment
Campaigns Officer to name just a few.
Freud’s rendition was
surely a case of ‘preaching to the converted’ as it was delivered to those
connected to insurance, disability accreditation, disability charities (who are
still using the language of rehabilitation) and various apologists for the
current regime. He also uses academics Waddle and Burton who, like many others
supporting this rhetorical model are connected with the Centre for Psychosocial
and Disability Research directed by Mansel Aylward, (former Chief Medical
Officer at the DWP) at the University of Cardiff: a department bankrolled by
Unum. Freud happily declares:
Not so long ago employers
were frightened of ill health. Good employers were concerned that being in work
would cause some harm. Responsible employers acted to protect people, keeping
them off work until they were fully recovered. But perversely they may have
been doing more harm than good. We now understand that work is not necessarily
bad for you.
People with physical or
mental health conditions do not need to be protected from work and sometimes
maintaining some form of working life can aid recovery. This understanding was
first put forward by Aaron Antonovsky. It was expanded upon by Waddell and
Burton. And helpfully formed an evidence base upon which I developed my welfare
reform report.
Work provides more than
just an income. Employment can also give people a sense of purpose, some
structure to their lives. It can also be an important part of people’s social
lives.
Quite simply good work is
good for you.
Quite simply ‘good work’
is in short supply under the Coalition. Their promotion of the deeply unpopular
workfare and the limited supply of temporary (including contract work),
part-time, precarious jobs, and job insecurity for those in work have all been
found to have adverse affects on mental and physical health. In addition, poor
quality work can affect mental health in the same way as no work. The growing
gap in inequality between the richest and the poorest affects the nation’s
health and remains intergenerational.
The Construction and Deconstruction of a model for
Private Profit
Aaron Antonovsky, one of
the academics mentioned, put forward the idea of the concept of sense of
coherence (SOC) in 1979[12]. It is not related to the bio-psychosocial model
but ironically identifies one of the reasons why the current coalition regime
imposed on disabled people will make them more susceptible to stress, anxiety
and individual deterioration.
Collingwood claims[13]:
The SOC is defined as: “The extent to which one has a pervasive enduring though
a dynamic feeling of confidence that one’s environment is predictable and that
things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected.” It has three components
– comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Comprehensibility is
the extent to which events are perceived as making logical sense, that they are
ordered, consistent, and structured. Manageability is the extent to which a
person feels they can cope. Meaningfulness is how much one feels that life
makes sense, and challenges are worthy of commitment. All these things are
based on financial security, upbringing, social networks and natural ‘coping’
styles. Unremarkably, those in higher social classes who are more financially
secure are deemed to have higher SOC levels, yet it also likely that they have
better health outcomes too, as they are more likely to come from financially
secure backgrounds.
As Antonovsky died in 1994
he will be unable to sue Freud for what seems to be a complete
misinterpretation of SOC. Later we’ll compare the Antonovsky theory to the
Waddell and Burton (Unum) scenario which exhibits a ‘blame the individual’
approach developing individualistic themes on illness and disability in which
the social is completely erased.
Of course, the Health and
Well- Being conference is just one in a long line of such conferences. In 2001
a conference with the charming title of ‘Malingering and Illness Deception’ was
held at Woodstock near Oxford. It covered old ground for the insurance
industries. Amongst the participants were Malcolm Wicks, then Parliamentary
under Secretary of State for Work, and Mansel Aylward: Chief Medical Officer at
the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and a number of academics like
Waddell and Burton who would come to add academic credibility to Unum’s and
government protestations on disability and illness.
What linked many of them
together, including Aylward, was their association with the giant US insurance
company UnumProvident (later Unum), represented at the conference by John Lo
Cascio. The goal of the conference was the transformation of the welfare
system[14] in particular the reduction of payments to disabled people which was
perceived to be a key problem for successive governments. Unum were perfect for
such a project as they had a very useful track record of reorganising exactly
what health problems were in order to avoid insurance payouts. John Lo Casio
was no stranger to such events or to working with Westminster governments.
As second Vice chair of
Unum he had been brought in by Conservative Peter Lilley (Secretary of State
for Social Security 1992-1997) to ‘manage claims’ of incapacity benefit. Both
Lo Casio and Alyward joined the government medical advisory group to devise the
All Work Test, a forerunner of the Personal Capability Assessment (PCA) and a
forerunner to the more recent Work Capability Assessment (WCA) used by Atos.
The All Work Test awarded points for different descriptors and ignored GP
evidence-Instead a set of adjudication officers who were trained in a theory
set out by Mr Lo Cascio were employed to aid the management of claims – sounds
familiar doesn’t it? Unum Provident was at the centre of UK welfare reform as
early as 1992 under the Thatcher government, but they worked with New Labour
too.
Unum Provident continued
to build its sphere of power and influence, in 2001 launching: New Beginnings,
a public private partnership between charities, including Disability Charities,
NGO’s and government ministers with the express intention of furthering the
company’s power in policy making. The New Beginnings advisory group included
some of the academics from the Woodstock conference as well as major disability
charities such as the Shaw Trust, Disability Alliance, and the Employers Forum
for Disability[15] Unum went further stretching their tentacles into the
university sector with the help of Mansel Alyward formally of the DWP.
Mansel Aylward, began
directing the Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff
University in 2004:a department that Unum Provident paid 1.6 million pounds
for. A department set up to provide an
academic credibility and a new political slant to the bio-psychosocial
model[16] allowing Freud to claim that
welfare reform for disability benefits was backed up by evidence that ‘work was
good for you’. The department included Alyward, Professor Peter Halligan and
Gordon Waddell. One year later Alyward and Waddell produced The Scientific
& Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits published by the DWP. As
Rutherford[17] notes:
In their declarations of
interest at the beginning of the text neither man cites their association with
UnumProvident. This matters, because the monograph provides the unacknowledged
intellectual framework for the 2006 Welfare Reform Bill [originally passed by
New Labour]. And the methodology used by Waddell and Aylward is the same one
that informs the work of UnumProvident. In a memorandum submitted to the House
of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions, UnumProvident define their
method of working: ‘Our extended experience … has shown us that the correct
model to apply when helping people to return to work is a bio-psychosocial
one’.
Peter Halligan, and Derek
Wade of Oxford University (another Woodstock academic) explained the model in
the British Medical Journal as something that needed to make a break from old
understandings of the bio-psychosocial. ‘The old biomedical model of illness,
which has dominated health care for the past century, cannot fully explain many
forms of illness.’ What they really meant was that it was not helping reduce
the number of applicants for incapacity benefit.
The old model ‘assumes a
causal relation between disease and illness, (?) and fails to take into account
how cultural attitudes and psychological and social factors shape illness
behaviour. In other words it allows someone to report symptoms of illness, and
for society to accept him or her as sick, without their having pathology’-a
throwback to Parsons’ ‘sick role’ theory. They add that: ‘Personal choice plays
an important part in the genesis or maintenance of illness’.
Alyward and Wadell moved
this rhetoric up several gears: Arguing that adopting this new version of the
model would lead to a ‘fundamental transformation in the way society deals with
sickness and disabilities’ (p123). The goal and outcome of treatment is work:
‘work itself is therapeutic, aids recovery and is the best form of
rehabilitation’. Work can set you free, in fact worklessness now transforms
into a bizarre serious risk to life. It is announced as:
one of the greatest known
risks to public health: the risk is equivalent to smoking 10 packets of
cigarettes per day’ (p17).
Halligan and Wade also tap
into theories of Talcot Parsons to argue: ‘Our model suggests that illness is a
dysfunction of the person in his (or her) physical and social environment’.
Like Parsons, they suggest that the ‘sick role’ is no more than an individual
deviance: a choice. The solution is to change people’s behaviour by
transforming the language and culture of welfare, and by using incentives as a
‘motivational tool’ to prise people out of their sick role (p166). The
motivation tools were later renamed sanctions. That is sanctions to those people
refusing to work for their benefits on programs such as ‘workfare[18]’,
sanctions through which their benefits can be removed from weeks up to three
years leaving them without income if they dare indulge in any ‘wrong thinking’.
Influence
and Profit: Unum, ATOS and complicit Disability Charities
In July 2007 The Personal
Capability Assessment (PCA) was redesigned by two technical working groups, one
for ‘physical impairment and another for mental health issues. Representatives
from Unum and Atos were present in both groups[19]. The redesign would be one
step closer to the hated and much maligned Work Capability Assessment to be
delivered by Atos Technical working groups on the WCA also hosted the views and
input of some of the big Disability Charities including: MENCAP, MIND, the
National Autistic Society, Parkinson ’s Disease Society, RNIB, RNID and the
Disability Benefits Consortium including some of those already mentioned, as
well as Leonard Cheshire Disability, Sense, RADAR, SCOPE, Sue Rider and the
Papworth Trust[20].
No doubt this was good
preparation for the Disability Works UK launch in 2011 another charity
consortium exercising their muscle as ‘experts in disability employment’
involving SCOPE, MENCAP, MIND, Leonard Cheshire, and Action for Blind People (a
part of RNIB) with a healthy turnover value of 654.4 million and a cumulative
surplus of 15.6 million[21] All corporate disability charities were more than
prepared to take maximum advantage of workfare type schemes recently announced
as having unlimited time scales for disabled people[22].We should note that so
far we do not see any user-led disabled peoples groups involved in any
positions of power or profit in this wholesale transformation of welfare or in
partnership with the government.
The charities were
speaking for us because there were profits to be made from lucrative government
contracts designed to get disabled people back to work- they are in the
disability business too after all. They continue to ‘help’ by advising on
mental health issues and producing publicity against the WCA that they were
involved in and publicity against Atos, who they sat at the table with-I guess
that’s part of the social model bit they adopted, plus of course their
partnership with user-led groups in the Hardest Hit protests which protested
against the WCA and welfare reform-oh the irony or is it duplicity?
Atos were also on board
the welfare transformation gravy train before the WCA. Atos bought out SchlumbergerSema in 2003 for
1.3 billion Euros. Through this, they gained access to key SchlumbergerSema
public sector contracts in the UK, including one with the Metropolitan Police,
a deal with the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Government Gateway
project[23]. This was a significant move as DWP contracts included the Personal
Capability Assessment and the buyout gave Atos (renamed as Atos Origin in 2004)
access to the Logical Integrated Medical Assessment (LIMA) and 100 million per
year from the DWP for delivering it with the proviso that they speed up claim
and processing times. Another Disability Charity: Shaw Trust announced their
pleasure at future work in partnership with Atos in 2010. Shaw Trust would also
profit through the misery of disabled people by delivering the euphemistically
titled ‘work programs’ for disabled people. Sally Burton, CEO[24] at Shaw Trust
gushed:
“Shaw Trust is delighted
the consortium has qualified to bid for the opportunity to supply seven Lots of
the Government’s Work Programme. As the UK’s largest third sector provider of employment
services, our partnership with Atos Origin and Pinnacle People can ensure the
charity sector remains at the heart of welfare-to-work.” [My emphasis]
But lets move from income
driven Disability Charities to failed bankers (apparently they do exist). In
2006 New Labour chose David Freud, a senior banker at UBS AG to conduct a
review of New Labour’s welfare to work policies. Freud later defected to the
Conservatives on a promise of a peerage. Invest in ME[25] expose Freud’s
mistakes in banking and other areas explaining his own incapacities in some
detail:
The “To Banker from
Bankies” 2009 report (which was supported and funded by Oxfam) states, in 2007
Freud was appointed as the key Government advisor on welfare reform by Labour’s
John Hutton and was commissioned to produce a report “Reducing Dependency,
Increasing Opportunity” on the “Welfare to Work” programme. This was despite the fact that, in his own
words, Freud “didn’t know anything about welfare at all” (Daily Telegraph, 4th
February 2008). Despite the great complexity of the welfare system, Freud
researched and wrote his welfare “shake-up” plan in just three weeks (Daily
Telegraph, 1st May 2006). It recommended that the existing role of private
firms (such as UNUM and Atos) in the Government’s “Welfare to Work” programme
be dramatically increased; he acknowledged that there was no evidence to
suggest that private contractors were any better than the Department for Work
and Pensions, but he still concluded that it would be “economically rational”
to pay them tens of thousands of pounds for every person they removed from
benefits.
In his report Freud
constantly misquotes studies and uses over 170 references to ‘models’ citing
the Tzars of the Unum financed Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research
at Cardiff University consistently. While Freud openly acknowledges a useful
partnership between of two of the most hated private companies and their
involvement in welfare to work issues, the company’s themselves have been much
more unwilling to acknowledge any links between them.
Links between Unum and Atos
In the 2004 Atos report,
Atos appears to use the language of Unum and the academics of Centre for
Psychosocial and Disability Research unreservedly, with sex thrown in for good
measure:
Psychosocial factors…are
at least as important as physical factors in the onset and maintenance of these
conditions. Patients can make a number
of ‘secondary gains’ with these unexplained illnesses, such as…turning a
socially unacceptable disability into a more acceptable ‘organic’ disability
caused by injury or disease beyond their control. They can blame their failures
on the illness; elicit care, sympathy and concern from family and friends;
avoid work or even sex; and there are financial rewards associated with
disability.
…if a patient believes their illness was
caused by a virus and there’s nothing they can do about it, their prognosis is
not likely to be positive. But if the
patient believes…that the symptoms won’t last long and they have control over
them, then the prognosis will be better….We need patients to understand their
situation, so they are more likely to go back to work (Except from the powerful
letter from Douglas Frazer to the House of Lords reproduced on the Invest in ME
web site)
Despite being linked in
the chain of the key players at the DWP, successive government ministers, a
string of conferences, the Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research and
involved together in the PCA and WCA. Atos and Unum continue to deny that they
have any links with each other. However, they appear to swop CEO’s and often
share the same platforms at conferences and on government groups as noted. As
DPAC’s sister campaign group Black Triangle posts show: MP Norman Lamb,
(special political advisor to Nick Clegg) also seems to have trouble
recollecting links with Unum. He denied any knowledge of a company named Unum
going as far as to write to our very own minister Maria Miller. Lamb wrote:
xxxx xxxxxxxx informs me
that a company called Unum Provident “has been convicted of major fraud and
banned from trading in many States in the US” up until 2008. He states that
this company has been advising the DWP on welfare reform since the early 1990s.
He also states that the current Atos Chief Medical Officer, Mike O’Donnell, had
been Chief Medical Officer of Unum from March 2000 to September 2010. Is all this true? Can you let me know exactly what the
Government knows about the position relating to Unum Provident and its
relationship with Atos healthcare?
The post on the Black
triangle site continues:
Imagine my surprise and
shock then considering the above to discover this morning while doing some
research online about connections between Atos & Unum, particularly the
relationship between Mike O’Donnell – Chief Medical Officer – Atos Healthcare
and Peter O’Donnell – Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer – Unum
Insurance, (brothers perhaps? Anybody know?), to find out that good old Norman
last Tuesday was a guest speaker at a Unum hosted fringe meeting at the LibDem
Conference speaking alongside Peter O’Donnell, the Chief Financial Officer of
Unum Insurance –
Speaker/Artist(s) Info:
Norman Lamb MP; Teresa Perchard, Director of Public Policy, Citizens Advice;
Nick Pearce, Director, IPPR; Peter O’Donnell, Chief Financial Officer, Unum.
Chair: Patrick Hennessy, Sunday Telegraph.
Time: Tuesday September
20, 2011 6:15pm – 7:30pm
Venue: Hyatt Regency:
Fortissimo2 Bridge Street, BirminghamB1 2JZ
Type: LibDem → Panel
Host Organization(s):
IPPR, Unum
It’s also worth
recognising the media representation at this too. As noted Unum continue to
deny any involvement with Atos and vice versa, yet Unum was providing insurance
for Atos workers up until 2009. On Unum’s rather amusing ‘Ask Unum’ site,
clearly set up so that they can continue denying what is a matter of record in
many instances, they state: “Unum UK currently has no relationship with ATOS
Ltd. Until September 2009, it provided Income Protection to ATOS Ltd for ATOS’s
staff” .Should they also add that the previous chief medical officer of Unum
installed at Atos in 2011 had nothing to do with Unum before that time too?
Additional information on
Atos partners has been requested through a Freedom of Information request to
the DWP by P. Wilkinson (2011)[26] this asks which third parties Atos works
with. The response states:
Atos Healthcare have
advised that to release the name of the private company they have appointed to
investigate the handling of complaints would affect the basis of the contract
between Atos Healthcare and that company and would have contractual and
commercial implications for Atos Healthcare.
As part of their
preparation for Independent Tier (IT) arrangements under the new Contract, Atos
Healthcare proposed and DWP agreed that details of the private company they
have appointed to investigate the handling of complaints be withheld to ensure
independence. This proposal and agreement took the form of an entry in the
contract as follows: “The name of this firm will not be divulged to any third
party to ensure continued
independence”.
Can we guess who it is
yet? The phrase ‘all in it together’ comes to mind –maybe this is what Cameron
was actually talking about. But, what of Unum’s own useful criminal record to
the Coalition?
Disability Denial: an
alliance between Unum and the State
When the links between the
profiteers in the misery of disabled people and the ideologies of denial are
exposed what we are left with? First this is not about getting people into
work, whatever the Tories and previous governments claim they don’t care if you work or not. Media
rhetoric[27] on scroungers, workshy and other protestations of undeserving poor
were part of the strategy to change public opinion helped along by misleading
DWP press releases. This is about denying benefits, denying illness and denying
incapacity. It is not about even about ‘thinking yourself well’ or tortured
nonsensical models shored up by dubious academics: It’s about something Unum
have a successful history of: it’s about denying pay outs and capitalising on
fear and risk.
The denial of pay outs may
be through Unum’s insurance policies or it may be through denying pay outs
after an individual has paid a life-time of national insurance contributions to
the state-but is put on time limited Employment and Support Allowance- the
outcome will be same. Who better to work with ex-banker Freud and MP’s in
denying people their rightful entitlements than a company which has been
publically named as: “an outlaw company- It is a company that for years has
operated in an illegal fashion[28]” by California Insurance Commissioner John
Garamendi in 2005, where Unum were charged with more than 25 violations of
state law and fined $8 million. Among the charges were:
- that the company knowingly applied the wrong
legal definition of disability in denying claims or ruling claimants were
able to go back to work,
- targeted high-cost claims for denials to save
the firm money,
- misused claimants’ medical records and even
the opinions of in-house medical personnel to deny benefits and wrongly
sought to file cases under a federal benefits law that severely limits
claimants’ ability to successfully sue their insurers.
Reads like the work theory
of Atos doesn’t it? These charges followed a financial settlement in the
previous year in which 48 other U.S states raised critical issues on Unum’s
working methods.
Rutherford argues:
in the 1980s Unum, and
insurance companies Provident and Paul Revere were in trouble in the U. S. They
had increased profits by sharing similar policies on disability and sickness
insurance and selling to professionals. A combination of falling interest rates
and the growth of diagnosed illnesses which were not subject to the insurance
sector’s tests appeared to be increasing, affecting the professionals who had
taken out policies with the companies, and in turn affecting company profits.
These illnesses included: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia, Chronic Pain, Multiple Sclerosis, Lyme disease.
An aggressive ‘Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome plan followed, with claims being managed in a way that
continued to maximise profits. The insurance industry called on the academics,
Professor Simon Wessely of King’s College and Professor Michael Sharpe of
Edinburgh University (both participants in the Woodstock conference) in an
attempt to reclassify those conditions that were costing money, and lobby the
medical profession on such conditions so they fell outside the remit of ‘pay
outs’. It meant that specific illnesses were targeted in order to discredit the
legitimacy of claims.
This ‘strategy’ was to
prove useful in dealing with the UK’s welfare reform and in overriding the
basis of medical opinion on a whole set of conditions. As the state joined in
the denial with its set of private companies and supporting academics Unum
achieved more market returns while disabled people began to see their own
welfare support rapidly diminishing.
Capitalising on Fear: how the denial of state
support improves Unum’s profit margin
Unum couldn’t lose, as
early as 1997 with the roll out of the All work Test, in which Lo Casio had had
played a major part, Unum launched an expensive advertising campaign. One ad
ran:
April 13, unlucky for
some. Because tomorrow the new rules on state incapacity benefit announced in
the 1993 autumn budget come into effect. Which means that if you fall ill and
have to rely on state incapacity benefit, you could be in serious trouble[29].
Lo Cascio replied in the
negative when Private Eye asked if he was concerned about the conflict of
interest involved in his company’s advertising campaign, which sought to gain
from benefit cuts that he had helped to initiate. However Unum Chairman Ward E.
Graffam did acknowledge the ‘exciting developments’ in Britain. Unum’s
influence in government was helping to boost the private insurance market:
The impending changes to
the State ill-health benefits system will create unique sales opportunities
across the entire disability market and we will be launching a concerted effort
to harness the potential in these.’[30]
In 2012 the worst aspects
of welfare reform were pushed through by multi-millionaire ex-banker Freud:
including over a million disabled people expected to be completely removed from
Incapacity benefits and unable to qualify for Employment Support Allowance
(ESA) through more stringent testing by Atos, 12 month time limits on ESA to
include those with terminal illness, and an additional half a million set to
lose Disability Living Allowance and be ineligible for Personal Independence
Payments amongst the regime. The fraud of the government rhetoric claiming to
be supporting ‘those in most need’ was almost complete with the closure to new
applicants for the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in 2010 and ILF’s expected
closure in 2015. To celebrate Unum happily launched another set of advertising
campaigns in 2012 advising people that the state wouldn’t support them and that
they should take out insurance against sickness and disability.
A Tale of two Models: Disabled People vs Unum,
Atos, Governments and Disability Charities
The social model and the
bio-psychosocial model have each had powerful affects on disabled peoples’
lives. However they are two completely different animals and we must never
succumb to the government’s attempts to conflate them. It’s quite clear which
model gives most to disabled people and which is being used to take away
disabled peoples’ rights and their right to dignity . It is quite clear why we
should continue to rage against the current imposition of the market regime of
misery. It is quite clear why we should continue to support and use the social
model of disability: a model with its rooted in the experiences of those
incarcerated in a Leonard Cheshire Disability Charity institution: One of the
disability charities that continue to profit from disabled peoples’ misery by
sitting at the table with governments, Atos and Unum ‘helping’ the progress of
the WCA and gaining from lucrative government contracts for work programs- with
their and other charity support disabled people don’t need enemies.
The increases in the
recorded suicides of disabled people brought about by the fear and misery
imposed on disabled people through the current neo-liberal regime is likely to
grow. Yet, the worsening situation of the many being denied support to which
they are entitled to through national insurance contributions, through the most
basic notion of human rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled
Persons, and the European Convention on Human Rights will not affect the income
or profits of the private companies or the disability charities involved .
This is not about getting
people into work- there are no jobs, much less jobs for disabled people. It is
not about even about ‘thinking yourself well’ or tortured nonsensical models
shored up by dubious academics in the pay of Unum. This is about denying
benefits, denying illness and denying disability: It’s about something Unum
have a successful history of: denying
pay outs for disabled people while capitalising on fear and risk. It’s about an
ideological regime of misery and austerity in the twelfth richest country in
the world.
It amounts to the biggest
government benefit fraud in social welfare and human rights in contemporary
history.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Ann
Whitehurst for sending me Jonathan Rutherford’s excellent piece in Soundings
(on which some of this is based) and other pieces explaining how poverty and
disability were being remade as an individual attributes rather than a societal
failings by the right wing. Thanks to Bob Williams Findlay for his helpful
comments. Thanks also to Julia Cameron for her comments, sending numerous links
and information and urging that this (or something like this) should be
written, and to all those activists past and present who will continue to fight
for the rights of disabled people using the social model and who usually also
say Rights not Charity! You know who you are…..
For online texts on the
social model and disability issues see: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/
[3] Oliver, Mike The Politics of
Disablement
[4] DISABLED PEOPLE IN BRITAIN AND
DISCRIMINATION: A Case for Anti-Discrimination Legislation
[7] The Social Model of Disability: Myths
and Misconceptions
[19] http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/register.php?r=journals/articles/rutherford07.html -not included in text
[22] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/16/disabled-unpaid-work-benefit-cuts?commentpage=32#start-of-comments
[23] http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2003/09/22/atos-origin-buys-schlumbergersema-for-e13bn-10006107/
[26]http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/84163/response/213090/attach/html/2/FoI%202549%2026.09.11.pdf.html
[27] http://www.dpac.uk.net/2011/12/scapegoats-sinners-and-political-strategies-the-media-and-disability-cuts-debbie-jolly/
Fight the Remploy closures!
Posted:
08 Apr 2012 12:10 PM PDT
Speakers
John McDonnell MP
Les Woodward GMB
National Convenor of
Remploy
Gail Cartmail Unite
Assistant General Secretary
Rob Murthwaite Disabled
People Against Cuts
Meeting
Thursday 19 April 7.30pm
University of London Union
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HY
Disabled access via Malet
street entrance. Adapted toilet on second floor. Disabled accessible lift.
The announcement by Maria
Miller, Tory Secretary for Work and Pensions, that she would close 54 Remploy
factories in a two phase attack on disabled people must be fought and
challenged by the whole of the Trade Union, Labour and Disability movement.
This attack is a
despicable act of barbarism and nasty vindictiveness against the company and
its employees. What this act of barbarism will achieve, however, will be
misery, poverty and a very early grave for the vast majority of Remploy
workers. Workers who will
be paying the ultimate price with their jobs for the economic crisis that they
had no part in causing nor benefited from, unlike the multi millionaire bankers
and the very good multi millionaire friends in the Cabinet who are doing very
nicely, thank you very much out of this crisis.
Tory ministers claim
Remploy factories are inefficient but fail to mention they handed out £1.8
million in bonuses to Remploy bosses who have deliberately run down the company
in order to ease the way for closure of the factories.
With 6 people chasing
every job vacancy in Britain, it is transparently dishonest of the Tories to
say the closures are part of a plan to get disabled people into other
workplaces. Of the workers made redundant in the round of closures.
in 2007 only 6% have found
alternative employment.
Instead of slashing jobs
and wrecking lives the government should invest and give disabled workers the
power to make Remploy the workplace they want.
This is an attack that can
be stopped. When construction bosses tried to cut pay for electricians by 35%
they fought back and won against huge fi rms like Balfour Beatty. Remploy
workers can win too, but like the ‘sparks’ they will need solidarity from the
movement to support their struggle. Please come to this meeting and show your
support.
Remploy Workers will not go quietly into the night,
we will not go quietly anywhere!
Remploy factories are not for closure and not for
sale at any price!
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