 Controlling sickness absence: A study of changes in the Danish sickness absence legislation since 1973Kristina Johansen, John Sahl Andersen, Sigurd Mikkelsen, Ole Pass, Sverre Raffnsøe and Elsebeth Lynge Health Policy, 2008, vol. 86, issue 1, 109-118 Abstract: Objectives To outline the principles underlying changes overtime in entitlement to sickness absence benefit in Denmark.Methods The Danish sickness benefit scheme during the past 30 years has been studied based on a comprehensive review of the Sickness Benefit Act from 1973, and all later amendments to the act.Results Entitlement to sickness benefit in Denmark has undergone considerable changes during the past 30 years. The guiding principles of the reforms have been financial savings in combination with an assumption that human behaviour can be controlled through bureaucratic administration with focus on monitoring and evaluation.Conclusions The Sickness Benefit Act was initially based on a broad concept of disease but the implementation underwent major changes. In the 1970s and 1980s entitlement to benefit depended very much on medical diagnosis. This practice changed and today's policy is to some extent a return to the biopsychosocial approach in the sense that the citizen is not regarded a passive victim of disease but an active player in influencing own working capacity. Added to this is, however, a new element of much tighter control leaving less room for autonomy. Date: 2008 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:86:y:2008:i:1:p:109-118 Access Statistics for this article Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier |
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