ACT leader David Seymour’s claims that doctors are erroneously certifying people unfit for work are being labelled as “political rhetoric” by the president of the Royal College of GPs.
ACT wanted to make it mandatory for all health and disability benefits to be independently issued by an MSD approved pool of designated doctors.
On a Jobseeker health and disability benefit, people need a work capacity medical certificate from their doctor and would need reapply every 26 weeks.
In the NZ Herald’s Powerbroker’s debate on Wednesday night, Seymour said he knew people were doing this. He told RNZ on Thursday his evidence was people telling him it had happened.
Dr Luke Bradford told Checkpoint, Seymour was playing to a proportion of the electorate with his comments, and they were “political rhetoric”.
“It’s a soundbite, it’s got the attention.”
He said there would be certain case examples, but the vast majority of sickness benefit sign-offs were for people who were genuinely unwell.
Bradford said where things often got tricky was around mental health and helping those people transition into the idea that daily activity and work was more useful for them.
If a doctor was unsure on a person’s fitness to work there was a box on the form they could tick asking for a second opinion from an MSD pool of doctors, he said.
“My other concern for this policy is where will this pool of doctors MSD uses come from? We’re already under resourced…”
Bradford said a conversation was needed to help people in the mental health space feel ready to go back to work and not have their mental health impacted by it.
“I don’t think it’s all on the doctors to say yes or no.”
Since the Covid-19, Bradford said there had been a rise in cases of anxiety and agoraphobia associated with lockdowns and there weren’t underlying support systems for them.
“I do not think my colleagues are erroneously, illegally, inappropriately filling these in, in the majority of cases at all.”