GPs incompetent or liars?

If you have read my blog before, you would proberbly guess I’m not a big fan og doctors/nurses and think far to many of them can not be trusted. It did however come as a suprise to me when I found out that even people who like to think they are in a postition of power dont trust them ether.

Take the case of  Sir David Freud (an investment banker hired by Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell). Mr Freud points out that it is “ludicrous” that medical checks were carried out by a claimant’s own GP for Claiming incapacity benifit. I wonder why that is. Is he saying the GP is not good enough at his or her job or is he saying they are liars?

Mr  Freud seems to want ‘independant’ doctors to carry out the medical examinations/assesements. That might seem fine to some, but that would only work if the patient was forced by the ‘independant’ doctor to disclose their entire GP file. With claimants being denied access to benifits if they say no, consent is not something the doctor could claim to have. It is not the first time the DWP has used the ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ crap to gain unrestricted access to GP files. Are they going to go back down that road again?

Lets not forget it would not only be the ‘independant’ doctor who gets access. There is all thei admin staff to worry about. How long will it be before the DWP demands that claimants allow access to their national record?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7223687.stm