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The BBC has been making a big fuss about the cost of sickness in the UK.

But all the noise is about the amount of money the government is spending on sickness benefits. What about the suffering caused to sick people themselves?

Read the BBC’s article about it and you should be sickened yourself:

“The number of sick and disabled people out of work is putting the UK at risk of an “economic inactivity crisis” that threatens the country’s prosperity, according to a new report.

“There were 800,000 more people out of work now than in 2019 due to health conditions, costing employers £85bn a year, according to the review by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield.

“One in five working age people were out of work, and not seeking work, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions but produced independently.

“Without intervention, another 600,000 people could leave work due to health reasons by the end of the decade.

“Illness-related inactivity costs the UK economy £212bn annually, by some estimates, or nearly 70% of income tax, through lost output, increased welfare payments and additional burdens on the NHS.”

What kind of intervention does the BBC mean? Inevitably, it is intervention to stop sick people getting the help they need:

“Sir Charlie… will lead a taskforce aimed at helping people return to work.

““Work is generally good for health and health is good for work,” he told BBC Breakfast.

““For employers, sickness and staff turnover bring disruption, cost and lost experience,” he said. “For the country, it means weaker growth, higher welfare spending and greater pressure on the NHS.”

“People could be encouraged to stay in work if health is viewed as “a shared responsibility between employers, employees and health services”, he said.

“Sir Charlie added his taskforce would work with GPs who say they find it difficult to judge whether or not a person is suitable to work while they are ill, but are asked to issue sick notes by patients.”

So the intention is to force people to stay in work despite their illnesses, and to force GPs to deny them the sick notes they need to justify benefit payments.

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That would be fine if we could trust the UK government to run a system that acknowledged genuine illness – but more than 100,000 dead benefit claimants between 2011 and 2019 are ample evidence that governments are more concerned with saving money than helping people.

Remember: this is a crisis that was created by politicians.

The Tories either cut the NHS or privatised it, making it harder to cure, let alone prevent, conditions that should not have been allowed to become huge problems.

The Covid-19 lockdowns caused serious mental health issues for many people, especially school-age children, many of whom are now struggling in the workplace.

And Long Covid has crippled many people, possibly for life.

These are just the headline issues but considering all of them, it is morally wrong to discuss this issue simply as a financial problem.

Framing that calls rising sickness absence a financial burden is incomplete and misleading. Here’s why:

Political and policy responsibility

Cuts to NHS funding, long waiting lists, and partial privatisation over the past decade have made timely treatment harder, meaning preventable or manageable conditions worsen.

Chronic underinvestment in mental health services and social care has left many without support, pushing them out of the workforce unnecessarily.

Pandemic and societal shocks

Covid-19 lockdowns, school closures, and social isolation triggered widespread mental health issues, especially among young people now entering the workforce.

Long Covid has left a significant number of people with long-term disability — a condition beyond anyone’s personal “responsibility” and not something a simple workplace intervention can fix.

Health is a societal issue

The BBC article emphasizes individual and employer responsibility (“work is good for health”), but structural problems — underfunded healthcare, poor workplace protections, social inequality — are the real drivers.

Treating this purely as a financial problem risks blaming individuals for circumstances beyond their control and ignoring the need for systemic investment.

The ethical framing

Reducing sickness and disability to a cost figure (£85 billion) frames human suffering in purely economic terms, which is ethically problematic.

People are not line items; their struggles often result from policy failures, not personal failings.

Your government is bad for your health

While productivity and economic impacts are relevant for policy discussion, the narrative should always include causes, social context, and long-term care needs, rather than reducing it to a financial burden.

Otherwise, it implicitly shifts responsibility from the governments and institutions who are actually responsible for the problem onto sick or disabled people themselves. Don’t let that happen.

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