It sounds like a bad joke even for Britain, where health care is mediated through the government-run National Health Service. But the story of 7-year-old Dylan Kirsopp is anything but funny. The boy, who suffers from intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a condition that necessitates his being fed through a drip, also has cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
In fact, young Dylan is so sick that the Department for Work and Pensions, which pays for the bulk of his care, is threatening to cut his funding. You read that right. Dylan’s monthly disability allowance is about to end because he is too sick.
As the Mirror explains, a child who is hospitalized for a period of 12 weeks or more no longer qualifies for the government benefit. It seems almost unimaginable that a law could be written that way, but the boy’s parents, Mandy, 35, and John, 37, told the Sunday Post, “we’re being punished because Dylan is too ill.”
The loss of the benefits will be crippling for the family, says Mandy, who notes that the couple has already sold its home to cover some of Dylan’s staggering medical expenses.
The Department for Work and Pensions released a statement that reads:
DLA provides a financial contribution towards severely disabled children’s care or mobility needs. Those needs are met in full by the National Health Service when a child is in hospital so stopping DLA prevents double provision.
It sounds reasonable until you read some of the horror stories about the National Health Service that have surfaced in recent years. A trio of reports on Britain’s nationalized health care system, released in December of 2013, found that patients were receiving dangerous, out-of-date drugs and that appointment wait times of up to six months were not uncommon for patients with cancer and other grave illnesses. It’s hard to conceive of anything worse, but in March 2014, the Telegraph reported that aborted fetuses were being burned as fuel to heat UK hospitals.
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