Norway: 2026 NAV court case over disability benefits

[Utsikt]

A brief summary of the ongoing court case about disability benefits for a patient with ME/CFS that has been ill since the age of 4.

NAV (the welfare authorities), claims that one should read about recovery stories and that recovery is about beliefs. Flottorp was on their side, an gave an incredibly biased account of FITNET (and ignored Crawley’s robust null result in the replication), and admitted that she had ever only met one severe patient but thought she could extrapolate from what she knew from moderate patients.

The expert witnesses (Sommerfelt, Saugstad, Kielland, Jakobsen) slaughtered Flottorp’s testimony. Kielland made a very cogent point about how they have looked for people with a G93.3 diagnosis that have recovered fully in national registry data, and not really been able to find any of them. Most have no income from work at all. If LP or any of the other treatments were effective, and most have been required to try them, why can’t we see it in the data?

Rettsak om uføretygd

Stemingsbeskrivelse fra en rettsak om uføretrygd i Gulating lagmannsrett, spørsmål om behandlingskrav ved alvorlig ME

www.me-foreningen.no

 

[Midnattsol]

An account by Trude Schei from the ME Association of a court meeting for a severe pwME applying for disablity but NAV/Norwegian welfare argues against it as they claim most recover and it's all about motivation and other, uh, interesting takes.

Court case regarding disability benefits for severe ME (Google translate)

Some quotes:

She [NAV's consulting physician] talked a lot about “motivation,” and that a lack of faith in treatment would cause it to not work. I took it as meaning that the family and Kolbjørn lacked motivation, which was why he was still sick.

She [Signe Flottorp] also believed that it was important for recovery to read stories on Recovery's pages about people who have recovered, but that the ME Association's user surveys could not be trusted, they were probably manipulated to show the results the association wanted.

She also claimed that "many are recovering."

He [NAVs lawyer] ]said that NAV did not need to deal with the Civil Ombudsman's statement because NAV assumed that all treatment provided by the Norwegian health service was reasonable, and that one could therefore not get sicker from it. PEM was only a few hours of discomfort.

On the plus side, I do look forward to the research Anne Kielland mentioned they had not published on how patients in the NAV system do not become able to have an income/work. Kielland is one of the researchers behind the Tjenesten and MEg project that has its own thread here, where they among other things have used registry data to follow patients in the NAV system and see if they manage to return to work or not.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

A brief summary of the ongoing court case about disability benefits for a patient with ME/CFS that has been ill since the age of 4.

An account by Trude Schei from the ME Association of a court meeting for a severe pwME applying for disablity but NAV/Norwegian welfare argues against it as they claim most recover and it's all about motivation and other, uh, interesting takes.

Reddit thread here and worth copying.

NAV (Norways welfare administration) denied claiming ME/CFS is something you can recover from/get better with faith, hope and motivation. Nav’s lawyer yelled at Kolbjørn “are you aware there has been many other patients much worse than you, who have completely recovered? What do you think about that?”

Kolbjørn was helped into court in a wheelchair with a mask over his eyes for severe light sensitivity. He spoke in a low voice the whole time, trying the best he can to use simple short words to describe his day to day life. He explained he is mostly bedbound and that there is nothing he wishes more than to be healthy.

Navs lawyer went to great lengths to insinuate that the low level of functioning was due to the family's focus on activity adaptation, and the family beliefs that ME was a biomedical disease. According to navs lawyer, this is a view shared only by a small, peculiar group, and contrary to "general opinion" who all agrees that it is psychosomatic. There the family did not seek documented effective treatment in the public health system such as GET, CBT, LP etc. Instead the family seeked "alternative" practitioners who treat it as a biomedical illness. Further claiming people who believe in the biomedical model are just waiting for a pill, he claimed, and they are not open to other approaches, or motivated to try. "If they continue as they are now, he will never recover!”

Nav claims he has not gone through these treatments (CBT, GET etc.), which according to them will help him recover - therefore they cannot grant him disability benefits.

 

[Utsikt]

A bit of layman’s context:

Our welfare laws only require us to have tried any treatments or measures that are reasonable/appropriate (hensiktsmessig) in terms of their ability to increase your ability to work.

NAV claim that CBT, GET, LP etc. are effective treatments. They also often claim that patients that have been sick for years have to wait and see if they experience spontaneous recovery.

They obviously have no proof that any treatments work. And their wait and see requirement is not part of the laws.

———

I wonder what is possible in terms of taking legal actions against NAV. They are ignoring previous rulings when assessing new cases, a parliamentary decision that told them to stop discriminating against ME/CFS, and binding instructions from the ombud about not overruling physicians without clear cause.

It’s a witch hunt of pwME/CFS, seemingly given more fuel by the chief physician, Marit Hermansen. For context, she’s the former president of the Norwegian Medical Association, and former leader of the ethics committee of the Worlds Medical Association.

She attended Reme’s secret seminar that lead to the Oslo-manifest, but she didn’t sign it herself.

The only positive is that she’s turning 62 this year so she might not stay in the position for too many more years.

 

[rvallee]

I wonder what is possible in terms of taking legal actions against NAV. They are ignoring previous rulings when assessing new cases, a parliamentary decision that told them to stop discriminating against ME/CFS, and binding instructions from the ombud about not overruling physicians without clear cause.

They are definitely opening themselves up to serious legal trouble in the future, but as long as they can argue these absurd things in court with the authority they represent, well, medical opinion is legal evidence in itself. Which is a really big loophole when you think about it. Once we pass a breakthrough point, though, all of this will be seriously liable.

It's so completely backwards, and every bit as disgusting as what the tobacco industry did. But the health care industry is far larger and more powerful and their opinions count as evidence. What a freaking world.

 

[MSEsperanza]

[Moved from 'News from Scandinavia' thread]

Saw this on another thread:

According to a summary by the Norwegian ME Association, Flottorp recently claimed under oath in a Norwegian court that she was not aware of 1) Crawley’s replication of FITNET with null results, and 2) MAGENTA with null results.

Now wonder whether this trial and Flottorp's testimony should have an own thread?

The source is Trude Schei's account on the Norwegian ME Association's webpage (sorry, can't find a date):

Browser Translate by Firefox:

[...]

Expert witness for NAV -- Signe Flottorp​

"Signe Flottorp said much of the same as Nav's advisory doctor, but also talked about research on different understanding models, and attempted to place ME under MUPS. She mentioned research that supported her view, but didn't mention anything that contradicted it.

"She mentioned, for example, the FITNET study as an example of cognitive therapy having good effect – but when she was since asked if she knew about the replication of the FITNET study (internet-based cognitive therapy for adolescents) and that the replication did not make the same finding as the original, and is not effective, or that another study found that graded exercise did not work, she did not know about it.

[Added by MSE: The other study is MAGENTA, links go to the UK ME Association's reports]


[Edited to remove some parts covered already in others' posts]

 

[Turtle]

Saw this on another thread:



And found a post about that point of Flottorp's testimony and more valuable comments on the background, a trial on disability benefits in case of serious ME, here in this thread.

Now wonder whether this trial and Flottorp's testimony should have an own thread?

The source is Trude Schei's account on the Norwegian ME Association's webpage (sorry, can't find a date):

Browser Translate by Firefox:

"There has just been a case in Gulating Court of Appeal, about whether a young man, 23 years old and with ME, Kolbjørn, fulfills NAV's conditions for disability benefits."
[...]

Expert witness for NAV -- Signe Flottorp​

"Signe Flottorp said much of the same as Nav's advisory doctor, but also talked about research on different understanding models, and attempted to place ME under MUPS. She mentioned research that supported her view, but didn't mention anything that contradicted it. She mentioned, for example. FITNET study as an example of cognitive therapy having good effect – but when she was since asked if she knew about the replication of the FITNET study (internet-based cognitive therapy for adolescents) and that the replication did not make the same finding as the original, and is not effective, or that another study found that graded exercise did not work, she did not know about it.

[Added by MSE: The other study is MAGENTA, links go to the UK ME Association's reports]

"She also believed that it was important for improvement to read stories on Recovery's page room people who have become healthy, but that the ME Association's user surveys could not be trusted, they were probably manipulated to show the results the association wanted.[...]

"When asked by Saugstad if she had met seriously ill ME patients, it emerged that she had only met one, but that she believed she could extrapolate from what she knew about patients with moderate ME.[...]

Supposed to be an expert witness?
Even I could put holes in this sort of nonsense during bad brainfog.

 

[Hutan]

It’s a witch hunt of pwME/CFS, seemingly given more fuel by the chief physician, Marit Hermansen. For context, she’s the former president of the Norwegian Medical Association, and former leader of the ethics committee of the Worlds Medical Association.

It would be hard to make this stuff up.

They are definitely opening themselves up to serious legal trouble in the future,

I would have thought that there is a strong case to make against NAV right now. Surely if there is reasonable dispute over whether a treatment works/harms, then it is unethical to deny someone disability benefits because they refuse to do that treatment. And 'reasonable dispute' is not a very high bar - I would have thought that the NICE ME/CFS Guideline would be evidence enough that reasonable people can hold a different view to that of the GET supporters.

I'd contribute something to the fighting fund.

 

[ScoutB]

Kielland made a very cogent point about how they have looked for people with a G93.3 diagnosis that have recovered fully in national registry data, and not really been able to find any of them. Most have no income from work at all. If LP or any of the other treatments were effective, and most have been required to try them, why can’t we see it in the data?

What a great example of how powerful having a bit of epidemiology is.

 

[Sean]

If LP or any of the other treatments were effective, and most have been required to try them, why can’t we see it in the data?

Exactly.