Norway: 2026 NAV court case over disability benefits

I’m so happy he won!

Less happy that the separation between «CFS» and «ME» is in the official documentation of the case though. To argue that someone with CFS benefits from exercise but someone with ME doesn’t doesn’t work when the terms are used interchangeably in diagnostic manuals in Norway.
 
It's the argument by the defense as I read it, but still. If they won it still gets legitimacy.

The ruling also has it on paper how welfare is about "hope" and "motivation" and include the famous "we can't rule out spontaneous recovery" ruling from a previous case. Good to have a collection of this mess at least.
 
we can't rule out spontaneous recovery​

And you can't rule it in either.

By its very definition you can't predict it, cause it, or rely on it. It has no role at all in future planning for an individual case.

THAT IS WHAT SPONTANEOUS MEANS!
 
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Midnattsol said:
The ruling also has it on paper how welfare is about "hope" and "motivation" and include the famous "we can't rule out spontaneous recovery" ruling from a previous case.
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Which is an argument for the recognition of temporary sick leave, not the termination of any form of assistance. If someone is ill for a while and recovers, no longer needs assistance, then that assistance can end as they return to work, a clear win for everyone. We are such a weird species.
 
I read the court’s ruling. It seems very detached from reality - the majority seems to think that rehab, CBT, physio, etc. are appropriate treatments for ME/CFS, but that the patient was too sick to participate in those.

This is an auto-translated excerpt from the minority, which is even worse:
[Patient] is 23 years old, and there are many years to go before he reaches the standard retirement age. That age is relevant when assessing the treatment criterion is clear from Section 12-5, second paragraph, of the National Insurance Act. Case law also holds that the treatment criterion is applied more strictly the younger the applicant is.
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The treatment measures that [patient] has undertaken at home have proved ineffective in improving his condition. The main challenge appears to be that the public health service
has not been able to motivate him to try various forms of recommended treatment. A shift in understanding of the condition could also have an effect and be significant for recovery efforts. As the public sector has not been in a position to do so, there are also no documented attempts at treatment.
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This, combined with his young age, argues in favour of further treatment being attempted with a view to improving his ability to earn an income, including that such treatment attempts must be documented.
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In conclusion, it should be noted that this case is not about opposing risky and burdensome treatment, as [patient] argues, but about being open to trying some of the
forms of treatment that public health authorities, based on current knowledge, recommend for ME patients, and documenting that this has been done.
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Utsikt said:
I read the court’s ruling. It seems very detached from reality - the majority seems to think that rehab, CBT, physio, etc. are appropriate treatments for ME/CFS, but that the patient was too sick to participate in those.

This is an auto-translated excerpt from the minority, which is even worse:
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In conclusion, it should be noted that this case is not about opposing risky and burdensome treatment, as [patient] argues, but about being open to trying some of the
forms of treatment that public health authorities, based on current knowledge, recommend for ME patients, and documenting that this has been done.
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:jawdrop: terrifying blatant double-speak where someone thinks that simply by saying the opposite they can make it true no matter what their agenda /real beliefs are. What devious wording.

And of course it isn't 'based on current knowledge'. And when you remove that from the second non sequitur part of their sentence, after 'not about opposing risky and burdensome treatment'
but about being open to trying some of the forms of treatment that public health authorities recommend for ME patients, and documenting that this has been done.
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It seems to say they don't care what it does to ME patients, or if it is risky and burdensome. You do it anyway.

Can I confirm what 'excerpt from the minority' means? Is this those who were opposed but didn't win out in the end?

and who those people are and what conflicts they declared and didn't declare?.

It's simply not credible/logically true for someone to be able to claim/say they listened or read any evidence or have knowledge of (nevermind calling themselves an expert) the illness and science and at the same time - given having done that would have meant reading the evidence that these treatments have no basis, do no good and have harmed so many (and it's obviously tip of the iceberg given the illness makes reporting that so hard), oh and are all based on 'science'/propaganda so low quality the results shouldn't count (because it becomes propaganda given the bias could, you know, be misleading or even deliberate in order to 'fake a result') - say it isn't at least 'risky' and burdensome.

IN fact what they seem to be suggesting is that the patient and future patients in their eyes should be required to harm themselves 'by being open to' treatment that is not just 'risky' but 'to no good end' either! Even they aren't brave enough in these quotes to claim these 'forms of treatment' actually do any good, don't harm, aren't risky, aren't burdensome and haven't already been seen to cause patients to deteriorate - just that that's what they want patients to be required to do.
 
bobbler said:
Can I confirm what 'excerpt from the minority' means? Is this those who were opposed but didn't win out in the end?
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There were three judges. This was the opinion of the judge that disagreed with the majority (and therefore also with the verdict).

The minority did not make any arguments for why their view is correct. There was no mention of the negative results in trials or the register study on G93.3 from Norway. I don’t know how verdicts are supposed to be written, but I think it was very poorly reasoned.
 
dave30th said:
Where is a link to the decision??
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Here for instance from the organisation the ME parents. But it's a PDF in Norwegian...

www.me-foreldrene.no

Kolbjørn vant i lagmannsretten!

En lang kamp med Nav er over. Retten ga Kolbjørn (23) fullt medhold – en tydelig seier. Kolbjørn tok Nav til retten for å få innfridd sine lovfestede rettigheter til livsopphold, da Nav stadig ment…
www.me-foreldrene.no
 
This opinion piece by Victor Håland gives an overview of one of the cruxes in these kind of cases: what’s an appropriate or suitable treatment (which you are required to try)?

In my, and VH’s view, that’s only treatments with a documented effect of increasing your ability to work.

In NAV and some courts’s opinions, it’s any conceivable treatment that someone thinks might have a chance of causing any improvement.

Foe this case, according to Flottorp, there are no treatment studies on the severe. So there can’t be any treatments with a documented effect for those patients.

In some cases, NAV have also require patients to wait on a spontaneous improvement. Legalis, the law firm used in this case, have written about that here.
 
The lawyer to the patient, Anthony Christopher Caffrey, has shared some thoughts on the Norwegian ME Association's website:

Dom i saken til Kolbjørn

google translation: Verdict in Kolbjørn's case

quote:
We hope for a curative treatment one day, but the health service does not have any treatment to give such sick patients. Nevertheless, he was rejected by NAV and the Social Security Court, because according to NAV he had not tried the treatment that is in the bulleted list of "can" treatments in the National Guide etc. for long enough. NAV, among others, presented Signe Flottorp as an expert witness, who stated that Kolbjørn should be a little more positive, because then he might be in a position to benefit from treatment. The Court of Appeal did not agree with NAV. The judgment can still be appealed to the Supreme Court, but Kolbjørn now wants to share some of the important considerations of the Court of Appeal.
 
Allowing an institution to demand that a patient tries unproven treatments on the grounds that a positive effect is theoretically possible gives the institution a way to reject claims indefinitely.

There are more theoretically effective treatments than a person can try in their lifetime. It's always possible to propose that something might help, however small the chance might be. It's always possible to claim that there exists a similarity between the illness in question and some other for which a treatment works. If one potential treatment is discredited, it's always possible to cite some new treatments that might have an effect.

The frequent references to a positive attitude show what prejudice is operating here.
 
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Kalliope said:
The lawyer to the patient, Anthony Christopher Caffrey, has shared some thoughts on the Norwegian ME Association's website:

Dom i saken til Kolbjørn

google translation: Verdict in Kolbjørn's case

quote:
We hope for a curative treatment one day, but the health service does not have any treatment to give such sick patients. Nevertheless, he was rejected by NAV and the Social Security Court, because according to NAV he had not tried the treatment that is in the bulleted list of "can" treatments in the National Guide etc. for long enough. NAV, among others, presented Signe Flottorp as an expert witness, who stated that Kolbjørn should be a little more positive, because then he might be in a position to benefit from treatment. The Court of Appeal did not agree with NAV. The judgment can still be appealed to the Supreme Court, but Kolbjørn now wants to share some of the important considerations of the Court of Appeal.
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It's absolutely insane overall, but there is an element of extreme insanity in the insistence of the government that he should try treatments he had already tried, which have no real evidence of efficacy, but then was refused access to those because they are not available. This is legitimately beyond satire, a system as cruel as it's incompetent.
 
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