Germany: In Coma and Looking for Work

[bobbieinok]

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1500145,00.html

....

A job for a terminally-ill patient?

This week it emerged that several towns and cities in Germany had apparently decided to interpret the new labor regulation to their own advantage to avoid shelling out millions.

Local authorities classified more than four million social welfare recipients obviously unfit to work -- among them old pensioners, children and terminally ill people with cancer and Aids as well as some lying in a coma -- as fit to work and registered them last year with job centers.

....

Health insurance companies, who are responsible for providing cover to social welfare recipients fit to work, have also been hit by the affair. The insurance companies receive a flat-payment of €125 per person from the government in Berlin, which only covers a part of the high costs of the health system.

With local authorities and social centers now shirking their healthcare responsibility for people on the dole and unable to take up a job, insurance companies faced with a rising number of seriously-ill jobless patients, are reporting cases of abuse.

On Thursday, a spokesman for an insurance company in Bavaria said that a paraplegic who needed nursing and cost the insurance company €75,000 a year was now categorized as fit to work as was a cancer patient, who was terminally ill and confined to his bed.

more....

[Iggytop]

1. WTF !!!

This sounds a bit crazy to me.....

[Kagemusha]

2. Well now you know it's not just prostitutes.

Thanks bonnieinok, for helping clear that misconception up. :)

[cliss]

3. This is a rather strange article....

the Germans are the hardest-working people on the planet. Efficient, beautiful craftsmen, innovative, expensive labor......but still: they're worth it.

So the idea that someone in a coma or terminally ill registered to work sounds - well, strange.

Unless they're hard-working Germans, that is.

[DivinBreuvage]

4. [Deleted Post]