Maximus To Get Paid More Than Twice As Much As ATOS For WCA

Maximus, the company taking over work capability assessments (WCA) will be paid more than twice as much as Atos but plans to reduce the proportion of doctors carrying out medicals in favour of cheaper occupational therapists, the Guardian reports.

Atos was paid around £80 million a year for its WCA contract, but Maximus will receive between £590 million and £650 million over three years, depending on performance. 40% of Atos assessors are doctors, 40% are nurses and 20% are physiotherapists. Maximus plans to take on 1,000 extra staff, but reduce the proportion of doctors and take on more occupational therapists instead

According to the Guardian, Maximus believe things will improve from the very start of the contract in March:

“if we can reach out and make people understand the process they are going through … if we can reduce some of the anxiety … if we can schedule more intelligently … if we can speak to people rather than just sending letters. Those are some of the differences … We believe if we do it right, we should be able to do this in a good way.”

However, given that the same staff will be using the same software to assess claimants using the same legal criteria, it is questionable how much difference a better bedside manner is likely to make to make.

See the Guardian for the full story.

Maximus: The Company That Dare Not Show Its Face

Join the Day of Action Against Maximus called by Disabled People Against Cuts on March 2nd.

Maximus – the US based firm brought in to replace Atos to carry out benefit assessments – will hide their corporate identity behind a hastily erected front company in an attempt to avoid damage to their brand The Guardian revealed yesterday.

According to the paper, the company will not use its logo on letters sent to claimants facing the notorious Work Capability Assessment, instead using a neutral name such as “The Centre for Health and Disability Assessment”.  In fact this company has been up and running since June 2014, suspiciously several months before it was announced that Maximus would be taking over the contract from Atos.  The Guardian should probably have known this, because they are currently running an advertisement for a Social Media Manager for the new company on the recruitment part of their website.

The company was established by senior Maximus directors Leslie Wolf and William Smith and is based in the their offices in East Sussex..  Already they are using this fake ID to recruit Functional Assessors and other staff to work on the new contract with the DWP as they desperately attempt to find enough healthcare professionals who are nasty enough to take on the role.

The suffering caused by the Work Capability Assessment is well documented with an ever growing list of tragic deaths linked to the process.  Despite this Maximus claim that the press coverage of Atos and their shambolic handling of the assessments has been “unjustifiably negative” and that in future people should blame the government if they don’t like what Maximus does.   This incidentally was exactly the same line Atos used when they whined about people complaining about them.  The idea that it is perfectly possible to hold governments responsible for the shitty things they do, and equally condemn the vile shitbags who profit from them, never seems to have occurred to this mercenary bunch of vultures.

It looks like Maximus are also using the same medical recruitment firm @sjbmedical that Atos used to hire staff.  Any healthcare professional considering working for these bastards should remember the words of a former Atos disability analyst:

“The job was making me sick …. It’s against my principles to treat people with long term illnesses in such a disgusting way, so I had to give it up.“People go into those interviews and talk openly to you because you are a nurse and they trust you.“Then your skills are used against them, to take away their benefits and destroy their lives.“I can’t be a part of that.”

Reblogged from The Void,

Taking The WCA Back To The Bad Old Days, Why Sick and Disabled Claimants Should Fear A Labour Government

Shadow Minister for Disabled People Kate Green has pledged to return the despised Work Capability Assessment (WCA) back to its “original purpose” raising fears that gains made by capaigners over the last few years could be lost as Labour attempt to rehabilitate the despised tests for sickness or disability benefits.

[...]


The introduction of the Work Capability Assessment was based on the tabloid myth that hundreds of thousands of people were faking their health conditions  and were really able to work.  This lie took hold despite the UK not having significantly more people unable to work due to sickness or disability then other comparable economies.  Yet still the abuse persisted from politicians of all parties.  In 2011 Ed Miliband even attempted to blame benefit claimants for the financial crisis claiming many of those unable to work were “ripping off society”.

On the ground however a very different picture was emerging.  As early as March 2010 Citizens Advice published a damning report (PDF) backed by disability charities revealing the horrific suffering the WCA was causing.  It turned out that most people were not lying about their health condition after all and tragic stories began appearing in the media of poverty, homelessness, ill health and even suicides linked to the new sickness benefit regime.  Huge numbers of decisions made by Atos and the DWP to remove benefits were being over-turned at appeal.  Protests against the process began to spread throughout the UK.  And slowly, the number of people found fit for work, began to fall (as can be seen in the above graph which represents new claims, not re-assessments)...

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There Is No Greater Enemy To Sick And Disabled People In The UK Than This Company: Join The Day of Action Against Maximus – March 2nd 2015

Originally posted on the void:

Escalation is the only possible response to today’s shocking and genuinely sad news that a prominent and formerly trusted disabled campaigner has taken a job with private healthcare firm Maximus – the company set to take over from Atos running the Work Capability Assessments for sickness and disability benefits.

Sue Marsh, author of the Diary of a Benefit Scrounger blog, has announced that she will take up a position as Head of Customer Experience with Maximus – who also run workfare schemes – on a salary believed to be around £75,000 a year. This appears to be a shabby attempt by the US private healthcare company to rehabilitate the Work Capability Assessment as the list of deaths related to the brutal process grows ever longer. A well timed called to action against the company from disabled people and benefit claimants today shows that Maximus have wasted their money.  Please…

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