What I find most offensive about this suggestion is that it treats a prescription as if it is a sentence.
All of us are free to obtain medical opinion, but we are also free not to take up the suggested treatment. So long as we possess the capacity to make decisions about our health.
This week, it was the turn of obese benefit claimants to be singled out. A local authority and a conservative think tank have built on suggestions that benefits could be dispensed via “smart cards”, floating the idea that benefits claimants’ use of leisure facilities to improve their health could be monitored via the cards. Obese or otherwise unhealthy claimants who fail to carry out exercise programmes prescribed by their GP could, the report suggests, have housing or council tax benefits reduced for non-compliance...
...What I find most offensive about this suggestion is that it treats a prescription as if it is a sentence. All of us are free to obtain medical opinion, but we are also free not to take up the suggested treatment. So long as we possess the capacity to make decisions about our health, we are entirely within our rights to say to a medical practitioner, “Thanks for your advice, but I have thought it over, and decided not to take up treatment” – even if it is likely that our lives with be shortened by that decision. A person with cancer, for example, is at perfect liberty not to accept surgery or chemotherapy, even if this means there is a greater chance that they will not survive. As long as they are capable of understanding the risks and the benefits of the proposed treatment plan, as an autonomous adult they can refuse something which most would see as clearly good for them...
...The reason that clients were required to give their permission is simple: people cannot be forced to undergo medical treatment unless they come under the remit of the Mental Health Act or the Mental Capacity Act. However, once under sentence, they faced serious consequences for failure to engage. Once sanctions become attached to non-attendance, people are no longer freely choosing continue with the treatment. If people with weight problems get the sense that they are being “sentenced” to exercise, rather than it being offered via prescription, they are likely to begin viewing GPs with some of the mistrust and hostility with which defendants view sentencers – and this would be absolutely disastrous for people with those very health conditions we know are linked to obesity. And if GPs begin to feel that the treatment they are offering is coercive, rather than supportive, serious questions about the ethics of that may lead them to cease prescribing exercise for the people who need it most.
Who, exactly, will that benefit?
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