The National Disability Insurance Disaster
The wealth of the nation is being sucked into the money pit that has become the NDIS
In 2017 a man came to my clinic to have his wounds dressed. He was wheelchair bound and plagued with serious pressure ulcers that needed dressing every couple of days. The number of dressings required was extensive and he had been unable to have regular treatment through the overcrowded, understaffed dressing clinic at the public hospital.
Eventually he died of massive infection arising from his ulcers.
When I first saw him, he was on what is called a “package “or “plan” from the NDIS the National Disability Insurance Program and he had a full-time carer. The NDIS ‘packages” are designed by anonymous individuals who seldom have contact with the medical practitioners who are the primary carers for the patient. Governments don’t like doctors and consider it important not to involve them in these processes because doctors ask awkward questions.
Doctors have always thought it odd that their disabled patients are on “plans” of some sort of which the doctors are completely ignorant and in which they, the doctors, play no part.
Medical practitioners like myself, do not understand how these packages are calculated. This man was in dire straits and our private clinic was not in a position to continue to provide the large quantity of dressings he required.
I phoned the NDIS and spoke to the relevant public servant. I asked whether it was possible to obtain funding on the NDIS for things like dressings. She was unsympathetic and uninterested. He would have to pay for his dressings. It was not her fault that he could not afford it. The NDIS and its supports have nothing to do with treatment she told me. This statement confused me. He could have a full-time carer an untrained non-professional person who took him places but no more.
He later died of massive infections arising from his ulcers, and I understand that the carer was by his bedside holding his hand when he died. While doctors see their task as doing everything they can for their patients, the architects of the NDIS don’t think this way and want to box disabled people into rigid plans that can only provide very restricted forms of care that cannot be varied even at the cost of the disabled person’s life.
When I and my medical colleagues first heard about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) we had no idea how it would work. Time would show the Federal Minister who introduced it had no idea either, otherwise, he would never have introduced it.
On the other hand, as that particular Minister is Bill Shorten, consensus is growing that he is either impervious or indifferent to the results.
We were confused by the word “insurance” which is defined as compensation for loss or injury provided by a corporate mostly, or government entity. So how could medical disorders or birth abnormalities be seen as compensable? What amount of compensation could be calculated in the first place and how long would last especially if a person recovered? But no one does recover, they remain on it for life. There is no attrition only accumulation.
It was a “brilliant” idea but like most brilliant ideas that emanate from Governments it would turn out to be a disaster, hence the title of this article.
A series of tables have been developed to assist people in calculating the amount of compensation a person receives who is disabled. The whole idea of the NDIS is to work out the degree a person is disabled then calculate the amount of support this person would need and allocate funds accordingly. They might need “carer time” which is the amount of time a non-professional carer would spend with them assisting in shopping and the tasks of daily life.
They might need regular physiotherapy or speech therapy. There are a host of things subsumed under the title “support” and there might be modifications required for their environment like the concrete driveway attached to the house of a millionaire who uses a wheelchair. This extraordinary example was provided by John Kehoe the Parliament House Economics editor, at a Centre for Independent Studies conference in April 2024. We need to remember that no matter how rich you are you can access support from the NDIS.
Although in the normal course of things, a person who has had an accident or illness and had to be compensated will have the cost of their medical treatment put into the equation but remember the NDIS cannot pay for treatment, only support and the people who provide this support are called providers or support workers.
Smart health professionals have set up companies that employ these support workers. If you are aware that a patient is on the NDIS you make sure you charge the scheme top dollar and that you charge travel time and allowances.
Allied health professionals like occupational therapists’ bill at the maximum rate with $200 an hour being common. Hollie Hughes, Senator for New South Wales describes these travel allowances are highway robbery.
There are NDIS companies that have made a fortune from the scheme so it is no wonder as you drive around town you can see large signs outside these NDIS companies saying, “We love the NDIS.”
The idea that you can calculate the amount of support required and cost it based on the diagnosis or the disability is another strange aspect of the scheme. We know for example that there are people in wheelchairs who compete in the Olympics and others who do not leave home. The only difference between them is the level of motivation and drive but both these individuals could be given the same package.
The notion of “package” is where, as they say, the rubber hits the road because it is the chief function of the NDIS to devise and cost these packages. Each person on the scheme is given these packages but, as per my illustration of the wheelchair-bound, there is little logic behind the development of these plans and the people who develop them are largely unknown and very arbitrary in how they decide to allocate the funds.
To illustrate the arbitrary and confused thinking behind these packages, some of which can be worth many thousands of dollars it was decided by one provider to fund luxury cruises for people allegedly disabled on the scheme, their families, and some carers. This was reported on March 26, Channel Nine news. These cruises were offered on sale to support workers who were told, “Contact us today and get ready to embark on the cruise of a lifetime.” The people who devise these packages never have to explain or justify them.
Three things have combined to turn people against the NDIS and to cause alarm to independent financial experts who have been plotting the trajectory of the scheme.
It has now been discovered that when some notorious serial rapists and killers finally get out of jail they will be supported by the NDIS sometimes with packages worth many thousands of dollars while ordinary criminals who are discharged from jail are lucky if they are given paltry social security benefits.
One example is Stephen White who smashed a child’s skull in with a rock and raped her. His NDIS package is 800 thousand dollars. A similar package has been made available to the serial rapist Wayne Wilmot who, with his co-conspirators killed a woman victim. This extraordinary abuse of funding has not been justified by the authorities quite simply because there cannot be any justification for it.
The second cause of alarm especially for Financial Experts was elaborated by John Kehoe, Editor of the Financial Times in his address to the Centre of Independent Studies in April 2024. The NDIS has neither caps on spending nor means testing for participants. Millionaires are eligible. When Governments remove caps on spending and refuse to apply means testing, budget blowouts inevitably follow.
The NDIS is on track to be the most expensive item in the national budget exceeding defense and Medicare. This prospect has financial analysts terrified.
The third major problem with the NDIS is that there are far too many people on the scheme, especially children and this number is increasing by over 5% a year. Kehoe says that as of the current date over twelve percent of all children are registered as disabled by the scheme. One in four pupils enrolling in schools are said to be disabled.
These figures are absurd. The cost of this and the long-term consequences for these children is a horrifying prospect. The over-diagnosis of Autism, Childhood Anxiety and Attention Deficit Disorder in children who essentially have nothing wrong with them arises because society and parents refuse to accept that variation in children’s behavior and academic performance is normal and natural. Children who misbehave or have poor academic performance are labeled as disabled by mental disorders.
The impact of this on education is bad enough but, as well, far too many children who are diagnosed with these conditions are placed on dangerous drugs like amphetamines. People who supervise children’s camps claim that the Webster packs (packs of sealed caches of tablets) containing the various drugs given to these children are larger than pharmacies provide in Aged Care facilities.
Once parents are convinced that the normal behaviour of their children is really the result of a mental disorder they naturally become convinced that medical treatment is required. Far too often family doctors go along with this and fail to question diagnoses formulated for the NDIS by psychologists and other health professionals with limited experience of child psychiatry.
A disturbing trend has now developed in the Youth Justice System with regard to child offenders, many of whom are on the NDIS, whose lawyers claim that if they are “disabled” and on the NDIS, they are not responsible for their behaviour. This follows the misguided notion that people with diagnoses of mental disorders cannot help what they are doing.
As John Kehoe pointed out in his address to the Centre for Independent Studies, the current Minister responsible for this is Bill Shorten and he sees this scheme as his “baby”. He will not tinker with it. This was another one of the financial debacles that arose from Prime Minster Gillard’s years along with the uncapped higher education program that almost destroyed the TAFE education system.
Governments will not learn the lessons from the past about these uncapped and unchecked schemes. A good example was the Dental Health Scheme through which patients could have a package of expensive dental work done to bring their teeth up to a reasonable standard. Like the NDIS there was initially talk of wonderful results for some individuals, but the program eventually was shut down after the budget of the scheme blew out to unsustainable levels because of rorting by dental providers.
In 2012 the government of Prime Minster Gillard almost destroyed the Technical and Higher Education sector by misleading students that they could have their higher education paid for by student loans by enrolling with private education providers. Thousands of students were defrauded by signing up to fraudulent higher education providers many of whom were fake and later went broke. Billions of dollars were lost.
The NDIS cannot be fixed. It has to be shut down like these other failed schemes. The government is afraid of doing this because we live in a climate of irresponsible media outlets that show children and people in wheelchairs shedding tears and declaring that the NDIS turned their lives around and claiming they can’t live without it.
A strong government indeed will be needed to cure this addiction to the bloated, costly, and failing National Disability Insurance Scheme.
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