You may or may not have Aspergers.

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The medical professional broke the news to you. That you do not have Aspergers, a rare form of Autism. Killed off your dream of getting on the disabled pension and an easy free ride at tax payers expense stop dead in its tracks.

In Europe and western developed world outside of America that have National health systems. Medical professionals can be freely accessed at little or no cost and determine whether or not someone has Aspergers or not.

Living in America and not being able to afford to buy a diagnosis. In America medical diagnoses are bought by paying the fees.

So living with your self diagnosed dream of Aspergers may be killed off if you dared to get confirmation from a medical professional. In America most people live with their self diagnosis because it costs 1000s to get a diagnosis.

I wish I was a real aspie

Disability fraud is relatively very common here in Australia due to our lax laws. You hear stories all the time about people doing crazy things like deliberately putting their fingers in a dicing machine and then claiming workers compensation for lost income etc. But there are also false claims of mental illness where people claim a one off payout from their employer or the government.

Faking mental disorders to the point where you can't function is not incredibly hard to do for demonstrative purposes, the trick (if NT people decide this) is to carry it on for many years, I find it difficult to believe they don't crack and eventually reveal themselves.

Who are you directing this at DL?

I'm personally very confused. I'm 47 & got a very (in my opinion, flimsy diagnosis from a so-called NHS specialist) in 2007 (aged 43). I said to my GP that i thought i might have Asperger Syndrome after he diagnosed 'Anxiety & Social Phobia......and he arranged for me to see this specialist. Since then at least 3 people with Good knowledge of Aspergers say I'm a 'Typical Aspie?
However, i often think it could be due to the fact i was born and brought up in very remote rural area's aged 0 - 16yrs old. I've also had Many Paranormal experience's and UFO sightings!

So in Australia do you get a lot more than £90 per week (plus rent) to live on? It's actually a worthwhile scam to live as if you are disabled when you are not? Or are you talking about fraud, pure and simple, where the person is not actually living on the money provided, but using it calculatedly to add to their income from other sources?

The only kind of fraud I can understand is where someone who has no realistic chance of getting a job feigns disability in order to get the somewhat higher level of benefits provided. I think here in the UK that amounts to a difference of about £20 per week, which is substantial when you are living close to the poverty line. That is a rational motive for fraudulently claiming disability benefits, therefore I am quite sure that some of it does go on. But even by the Government's own figures, the level of all disability benefits fraud in the UK is only 0.6%! (Caution: here I am relying on second-hand information, just as much as are those who carelessly repeat disinformation from the tabloid press. But I have never seen this figure seriously challenged; I just haven't bothered to check.) The system is already very tough (and indeed already corrupt). Also there is a deliberate Government and Press campaign to suggest that all claims are morally fraudulent (i.e there's nothing really wrong with anybody, and doctors are giving claimants a soft ride), and that a large proportion of them are criminally fraudulent. Distinctions between totally different kinds of case are totally ignored, and so are the known statistics provided by the Government itself.

The real corruption (here in the UK) is in the system operated by the Department for Work and Pensions and Atos Healthcare. See e.g. this article in the Guardian (with 171 readers' comments, most of which are worth reading, if you've got the time, and are involved in any way with the system in the UK).

Last edited by Twirlip on 17 May 2011, 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

AFAIK. I do not direct my comments at anyone. I just put down generalisations and comment on random things.

European and welfare systems with universal medical treatment it is much easier to get a medical diagnosis from a trained medical professional. In the US a country that only has a private health system, a medical diagnosis come at a huge cost and out of your own pocket or paid by your private health insurance provider.

Europeans pay higher taxes for universal health system(also has private health system), universal education system(also has private education system), welfare system to assist people in need and adequate public transport system. The US has lower taxes and limited public services, private pension system instead of welfare system.

I still wonder if people are hearing every 'disability cheater' story 10 times each in the media, in comparison to hardly ever hearing stories about people who are legitimately getting disability benefits. That is, so that the perception becomes that most people on benefits are cheaters.

I.e. I can't recall many TV news programs that did a story about someone needing to be on disability but unable to get it for some inappropriate reason (except for some stories about homeless veterans), but I can recall a lot of "secretly caught on video" type articles.

Someone posted in another thread about a UK politician saying that their disability benefits system "must" be upturned because currently, people on benefits for alcoholism get more money than people on benefits for blindness. Someone checked that claim and found that it's a lie. I don't think that politician made a dumb mistake -- I think s/he knew people are so primed to believe something like that that they'd accept it uncritically.

It may partly explain the exodus of British migrants we get on our "golden" shores! I guess both types of fraud are possible but I was referring to people living of disability. For example a friend of my father's worked in the railways for 20 years and then claimed chronic backpain that caused him great distress (I know for a fact it's a crock). The disability pension and payout from the railway payed for a double story house and the money was to compensate the great "stress" it caused him and his family (i.e. acquired mental disorder)



Most of what I post is secondhand information but I try my best to locate reliable sources to validate my information.



I am interested so I'll have a look. Here's some interesting reading on the broad problems that besets the Australia federal Dept of Human Services
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/c ... 6032900406

Unfortunately it's a tabloid...

I just ran across this in the comments of that article about cuts to the disability system (DLA) in the UK. I haven't checked it yet, but that is what I wonder about in the USA, despite the perceptions to the contrary.

(Yeesh, never thought I'd be glad to be in the USA because "the socialism is better.")

P.S. Thanks for posting the link to that article Twirlip.

Yes the EU is certainly more advanced in universal healthcare, pensions and free education. But all of that will change (and is changing). The days the Spanish and Greeks can claim siestas during worktime will probably come to an end given the state of their economies. While social support for autism in the UK is better than Australia the cost here in Australia is relatively cheaper.


I feel really sorry for Americans that they are forced into private healthcare or else they risk death or bankruptcy in the public system. I'm not a big fan of Obama but I supported his initiative for subsidised healthcare,



I prefer a model adopted in most EU countries, Canada and Australia where we pay higher taxes but get better social services. I think Sweden used to have the most advanced social services system in the world and the best pension/welfare system. It keeps the population happy, although the weather in Stockholm is gloomy.

i was told i was to old to be diagnosed, im in my 30's. been dx with load of other stuff that didnt fit and has been taken away, mostly mental illness' ..............im too old for anything, boo-hoo

i have nothing to gain from being officially diagnosed as an aspie, its just it would explain why im weird.

all the assessments by learning psychologists and GPs point to something on the spectrum, and there are many similarities between myself and other members here, but all im looking for is an explanation WHY...

Yep, that's one of the detriments of the US's free-market system. The economic losers in the USA's system really lose in all parts of society (Especially healthcare when they can't afford it), while the "losers" in a more socialistic society don't "lose" nearly as much. However, it seems that a slightly lower average disposable income is the main trade-off.

I do hear stories all the time, but are they verifiable?

When the US was trying to cut back on welfare in the 90s, there were a lot of outright lies about how people were supposedly fraudulently claiming welfare, so I tend to take these claims with a grain of salt.

The other thing is that being too disabled too work doesn't mean too disabled to enjoy one's self.