Ich lebe seit einem halben Jahrzehnt in Belgien (Flandern, um präzise zu sein). Hin und wieder habe ich Geschichten von Kollegen darüber gehört, wie viele Menschen es in Belgien gibt, die entweder (1) langfristig krank oder (2) dauerhaft behindert sind, während sie tatsächlich nur den Wohlfahrtsstaat missbraucht haben. Da ich aus Polen komme, wo der Wohlfahrtsstaat kaum existiert und es ständige Hexenjagd gibt, um seine Finanzierung zu reduzieren "Die Hälfte meiner Familie aus Dorf X, die von langfristigen Behindertenprüfungen lebt". In Polen habe ich nie jemanden getroffen, der einen solchen Status hatte, dessen Familienmitglied dauerhaft behindert war, und ich nahm an, dass die Leute dieses Problem wirklich überbewertet.
Davon abgesehen habe ich diesen Artikel kürzlich gelesen (Link) Und es ließ mich ziemlich schockiert. Besonders dieser Teil:
Über ein Viertel der von Riziv untersuchten Personen mit langfristigen Krankheiten verlor nach der Überprüfung ihren Ungültigkeitsstatus. Der Bericht zeigte auch, dass mehr als die Hälfte der Bewertungen vorübergehend nicht geeignet war, aber nicht für das Leben außer Gefecht gesetzt wurde. Weniger als ein Fünftel wurden korrekt dauerhaft für die Arbeit erklärt.
gepaart damit:
Belgien hat eine halbe Million Menschen als langfristig krank eingestuft, a Abbildung vergleichbar mit Deutschland, dessen Bevölkerung etwa siebenmal höher ist.
In Anbetracht von Polen habe ich einige schnelle Nachforschungen angestellt, und in der Tat scheint es, dass nach unterschiedlichen Quellen die Anzahl der dauerhaft behinderten Menschen in Polen in Belgien ähnlich ist, obwohl Belgien das 3.5 -mal kleinere ist, was ziemlich schockierend ist – 500 Tausende für ein Land mit 11 Millionen sind doch fast 5% der gesamten Bevölkerung.
Was ist mit diesen Zahlen los? Vermisse ich etwas oder ist wirklich so missbraucht? Ich möchte wirklich niemanden – die Menschen wirklich behindert verdienen, verdienen Unterstützung und Respekt für unseren Staat. Ich versuche nur zu verstehen, ob Menschen in Belgien im Vergleich zu Polen und Deutschland eher behindert sind, oder gibt es in der Tat einen schwerwiegenden Missbrauch des Systems? Ich habe die Geschichten, die ich gehört habe, nie ernst genommen, aber in diesem Zusammenhang macht es einen Sinn.
Vielen Dank und bitte seien Sie sich gegenseitig gegenüber respektvoll, da ich weiß, dass dieses Thema sensibel ist.
Genuine question – what is going on with permanent disability in Belgium?
byu/absurdherowaw inbelgium
Von absurdherowaw
12 Kommentare
There are people abusing the system because the government makes it more worth staying at home on unemployment than going to work for the minimum wage.
I do hope they kick those parasites off unemployment because our social system is crumbling.
Just anecdotal from me as well, but it does seem it’s been a bit too easy to get this status in Belgium. I know of people who’ve lived of welfare forever, even own a home, but physically nothing much is wrong with them.
Even a friend of mine is long-term sick after a burnout, I don’t judge harshly, he’s productive in that he volunteers in social work a lot, but he just doesn’t believe there’s a fullfilling job out there for him. He also makes some untaxed money on the side of his welfare check with small side activities that he’s not too inclined to change things.
What i don’t get is how there are still doctors that enable this, or somehow gaps in the system that people can keep doing it for years.
If you have to start your post with „genuine question“ and follow it up with „Thanks and please be respectful towards each other, as I know this topic is sensitive.“ I already asume you are a troll. It’s like when they put „I am not racist, but…“ then you know the most vile racist shit will come out.
But hey, I’ll bite:
„Over a quarter of the persons with long-term illnesses examined by Riziv lost their invalidity status after the review.“
Is a misleading statistic: controls are not random, only suspect cases are controlled. They’re not sending inspectors to people with no legs to see if they can walk. So in a system with efficient inspections, you will find a high number of non-compliances.
„Just trying to understand whether people in Belgium just tend to be more disabled compared to Poland and Germany, or is there indeed some serious abuse of the system happenning? “
Our system is better than Poland or Germany in taking care of disabled people. We can be stricter, but that would increase the risk that disabled people do not get support, or that they get harassed.
There is of course abuse, and the statistics show that the authorities are controlling and taking measures. But lately there is a lot of effort by certain parties (and trolls) to kick down: people without papers used to be a target, now it’s disabled people or anyone needing state support.
>In Poland I never met anyone who had such status nor whose family member was permanently disabled,
Interesting to learn there are no disabled people in Poland. Do you shoot them? There’s a lot of Poles coming here to explain how Poland is such a paradise: no disabled people, no migrants, no crime, clean streets, good roads….and yet they migrate to Belgium. How contradictory.
I assume it’s because you can get the status with mental health problems (like a burnout) which is not the case everywhere. So naturally you’ll have more people benefiting from it.
In every kind of welfare system, there is abuse, there is no denying that, but there is also no easy way to „fix“ the system.
Some people say that only people with specific diagnosis can be on disability on long-term illness which is just not a right way to go about it, because so many people cannot get the right diagnosis, and if you want to do that, only people with cancer would be eligible for long-term illness. Others want to throw everyone off and just expect them to work, which is just not possible.
I’m on long-term illness, for two years and 4 months now. I do still work two days a week, but that’s the maximum because even sitting 8 hours is only possible because I’m able to lay down multiple times during my work day. The only diagnosis I have is one of chronic fatigue syndrom but that’s just because they cannot figure out what’s actually wrong.
So if you want to fix this whole situation, fix the healthcare system on top of that please.
There are actually a lot of sick/disabled people in Belgium.
Flanders has a very high suicide rate, and has had it for years.
Part of the problem is our culture, we are not very social here and there isn’t as much of a sense of community here. There’s also a lot of shame and taboo around psychological problems, burn outs… Our healthcare system for mental health (psychologists, psychiatrists) is not very accessible and expensive. The waiting lists are crazy, and there’s just not enough beds/doctors.
It’s also not easy to get permanent disability in Belgium. You need to make a case to the FOD and need plenty of proof from different doctors that you have tried many treatments and are still unable to work. Same goes for short term disability, you get check up’s with the mutuelle and need to proof that you are seeing doctors, following treatments, doing volunteering work if possible.
There are a lot of myths about this, so I’m going to first explain how it really works for people who became long-term ill recently. I speak from personal experience:
– In 2018 I had a really bad postnatal depression and I was out of work for 9 months.
– I’m currently ill with Long Covid and I’m officially considered disabled. I’ve been on disability for about 4 years I think.
The first year of illness, your doctor has to write a “sick note” and fill in a specific form for the mutuality detailing how long you’ll be ill and for what reason. After a while you’ll be called in for a check-up at the mutuality’s doctor. For example, during my postnatal depression I had to go 2 or 3 times. As long as you’re making progress towards recovery and resuming work that’s usually not a problem. If this doctor determines that you’re not ill or not unable to work, you can lose the benefit payments and have to resume work. In most cases, the doctor relies on medical reports and your story, because most of these issues can’t be properly evaluated during a short appointment of about 10 to 15 minutes.
Once you’ve been unable to work for a year due to illness, things change. Your whole file will be evaluated and if they agree that you’re ill, your status will change to “invalide”. Once you have that status, your own doctor no longer has to fill in these forms extending your sick leave; this status will remain until you’re either back to work full-time or until the doctor of the mutuality decides that you’re no longer ill. I’m considered “invalide” and get invited for a check-up at the doctor of the mutuality about once a year, sometimes twice.
It’s a bit silly to call in someone with a severe an permanent disability or illness for yearly check-ups, so it’s also possible for the mutuality’s doctor to declare someone to be permanently disabled. I’m not sure how this process works, because I haven’t gone through this myself. If someone is permanently disabled, these yearly check-ups typically cease.
If they checked up on people who are permanently disabled and found that this was wrong in 25% of cases, there are only 2 possibilities:
– Either the mutuality’s doctors were too lenient in the past.
– Or the check-up was too strict and they overestimated the number that was wrongly considered to be permanently disabled.
Both explanations sound reasonable to me. On one hand, sometimes they were too lenient in the past, especially if people were close to the retirement age. On the other hand, there are many illnesses (including Long Covid and mental health issues like depression) that are very hard to objectively diagnose and that are often not taken seriously. For example, I know that in Germany people who are truly unable to work due to Long Covid often have a much harder time getting their disability recognized. I was mainly lucky that I quickly found the right doctor, who knew which tests to order in order to objectively show my disability.
Finally, it’s important to realize that this number of long-term ill people include people who are back to working part-time, including myself. A lot of countries exclude those people from the disability count, making it really hard to compare numbers between countries.
I got myself a list of polish people with liver disease in Belgium, then I investigated these people and found out 90% of polish people in Belgium are alcoholic.
That’s what those medias and politicians have been pushing for 2 weeks as a „scandal“.
Being disabled is not some sort of Binary (true, false) system.
to understand this try to anwser the following question:
„does the government of Poland take as good care of their own people as the Belgian government in regards to healthcare and other social services“
you can approach this question from a neutral perspective or from the perspective from a Polish expart that chose to live in Belgium for some (for me) undefined reason.
maybe people in poland with some form of disabilities are not receiving the right ammount of care that a Belgian might percieve as required for their context, i don’t see why this is so controversial.
Stories are anecdotal
Simple answer: abuse of the system.
Im glad the government is finally doing something about it.
Let’s hope we can work towards a mentality change. The lazy people need to go back to work or live a poor life.
Some people have no shame. You read and hear so many anecdotes of people that are (perhaps significantly) inconvenienced by their health issues that believe this warrants the label of disability and taxpayer money. At the same time actually disabled people seem to do all they can to integrate back into society.