The UK sounds very similar to the United States, then, with respect to routine denial of disability benefit applications. It's gotten so bad here that being denied for benefits has become the norm, even for people who are obviously very ill and disabled.

A writer who started on this platform about the same time I did in 2018 wrote a daily blog about his struggles with progressive multiple sclerosis. He's a young man who had recently graduated with a master's degree in history, planning to become a teacher, but his diagnosis and subsequent disabilities had other ideas.

Teaching (working any kind of a job) became impossible for him, because of mental and physical limitations MS brought about. Over the years, his limitations became evident in his public writing.

But those limitations, and his neurologists' diagnosis of a progressive illness, were not enough for him to be awarded disability benefits. He put in a claim and was denied.

I was surprised, as I followed along, but then I started poking around and learned that Americans who claim disability benefits are usually denied. Denial is the norm, not the exception, even for people who are obviously and significantly disabled.

So this writer had to hire an expensive lawyer, paying for the service via the generosity of family and friends he was fortunate to have. He then had to go through a year's long appeals process, at the end of which the Social Security Administration ruled that his diagnosis qualified him for benefits after all.

That ruling surprised no one, including, I'm sure, the bureaucrats who denied his benefits in the first place.

But that's just the system now. Deny benefits, even for very disabled people, unless and until they can find the resources to mount an expensive and time-consuming appeal.

This writer's story is nothing unusual. Advocates for the disabled all over the United States tell strikingly similar stories.

It sounds like the UK is trying to go to that place, that place where people's lives and well bring matter less than policies that make balance sheets look healthier.