Are GPs greedy bastards?

Unfortunately, some of them are, yes. News has broken today that many GPs charge princely sums (£130 has been quoted, which I confirm as the going rate for a lot of GPs) for helping patients appeal against decisions to remove their benefits, and some categorically refuse to help them at all. Even worse, some GPs will charge the full rate for their reports, but put them together in a shoddy and incomplete way, virtually guaranteeing that the patient's appeal will fail.

GPs are allowed to charge for any service outwith their NHS contract to supply "GMS", or general medical services to their patients free of charge. So if I am asked to sign someone's passport, for example, or give them a certificate confirming they are healthy to run a marathon, I will charge a fee, in these two cases either £10 or £20. But these reports for people mounting an appeal against the decision to remove their benefits are a different matter.

Whereas in the 2 examples I cited the paperwork takes no more than a minute or two to complete, compiling a report for an appeal can take 45 minutes or more and is difficult, demanding work. So one can see why they may charge a lot more for the work. In our practice we charge about £70. And importantly, we are being faced by an ever-increasing demand for these reports now that every other claimant is having their benefit cut or removed altogether by ATOS, whose doctors are (allegedly) offered bonuses for every person they can get off the benefits register

So at one level one can almost understand GPs being reluctant to have anything to do with these reports at any price, especially as each time someone's benefits are removed, it means that ATOS has ignored or contradicted the evidence offered by the GP in the first place when they issue a sick note stating that for medical reasons the patient is unable to work. That doesn't feel nice for us, as you can imagine. Add to that the fact that our reports, when they finally reach the appeals process, are often ignored a second time, then you can see why some GPs simply have no wish to go there. Meanwhile of course, the patients are caught in a trap: they're screwed if they don't appeal, and they're often screwed when they do. The fault is with the government who, quite unnecessarily, introduced these benefits cuts in the first place: this one.