Cancer patient receives disability support pension when it’s already too late
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Cancer patient receives disability support pension when it’s already too late
“Even now, I feel quite well, but the minute I’m physically doing a lot, you can feel the tiredness coming to your body.” Lynette, 65, cancer patient. Photo from The Guardian.
Last year, Lynette Penfold was told that her cancer had spread and she had two years to live. And it was only with this diagnosis that she managed to get some good news from Centrelink.
The disability support pension allows those unable to work to receive primary welfare payments. But with the way the rules are written, it’s almost impossible for cancer patients to make a successful claim.
The main problem is the eligibility to access the disability support pension. Rules require that a person’s condition must be “fully diagnosed, fully treated and fully stabilised”.
Unfortunately if the person’s condition is considered terminal, they do not meet the rules and requirements to receive the disability support pension, Even if they are in Penfold’s situation, and they have two years or less to live.
Cancer patients who are unable to access the disability support pension, are directed to apply for the jobseeker payment.
“You can imagine the shock,” the 65-year-old says in an article by Luke Henriques-Gomes for The Guardian. “I said to my son, ‘How could I be expected to do a full-time job? There’s no way.’
It was October 2019 when Lynette was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her first sessions of chemotherapy and radiation treatment started in December 2019 and lasted until February 2020.
Expecting people to survive on a jobseeker payment while they are battling cancer is unrealistic and cruel, says Penfold. “I couldn’t stand at the sink and make a meal. That’s how sick I was.”
Lynette with her sons. Photo from The Guardian.
Kim Hobbs, a social worker at a Sydney hospital, has seen cancer patients slide from their diagnosis, to unemployment benefits, to poverty.
She says that treatments would max out their credit cards and eat into their superannuation. And by the time they do manage to get well, they have already depleted their savings.
The problem is often worse for people in regional areas, who can face accommodation costs during treatment.
Even the application requirements for disability support pension poses a problem. Applicants are required to provide medical records and gather reports from doctors and other specialists, and with the pandemic still in sight, patients may not have access to documents they need.
But a move in the right direction is coming as more than 20 organisations, including People With Disability Australia and Victoria Legal Aid, have called for the government to remove the unreasonable requirement for a condition to be fully diagnosed, treated, and stabilised.
Penfold has moved in with her son in Port Stephens, in regional New South Wales.
Though it’s too late for her, she wants future cancer patients to receive better help from the government. “Now I’m just shitty about it all,” she adds. “I’m past the upset.”
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