According to the Income Protection industry:

"How fair is the welfare?
Tracey Scott - 30-Oct-2008
Money Marketing

... Inevitably, this radical reform - which forms a part of the Government’s plans to get one million people off incapacity benefit benefits by 2015 - has identified a host of issues and opportunity for the protection market

...
Another potential advantage of the new law is the prospect of it boosting income protection sales. As benefits become harder to claim, the importance of IP is likely to be highlighted, says Royal Liver IFA manager Aidan Dewhurst.

...
Income Protection Task Force co- chairman Clive Waller says: “If the industry uses this opportunity effectively it can stimulate sales of IP. The work that has been done in researching the value of work is very interesting but the additional publicity given to the size of state benefits will underline how little people have to live on if they are long term disabled and have no disability insurance.”

Anyone remember Professor Pactrick Mumford?

From the same source, Norwich Union "quits unemployment cover over recession risk."

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=175580&d=340&h=341&f=342

an old problem - as illustrated in private health care insurance. you can only get it if you're healthy...

i'm all for being positive, but the insurance companies in the USA have that country in a most undemocratic grip... i doubt that many people would want to give the insurance (or other financial) industries that amount of power over us...

i don't think every one would see the extension of the income protection industry as beneficial...with good reason it could be seen by some as a protection racket...

confidence wouldn't be high.... people have seen pension funds disappear, unaccountably it seems...and people's dealings with insurance companies are not always positive, even though it is a highly competitive industry - what with obscure get out of paying clauses, and charging most for the highest risk... premiums will be cheapest for those unlikely ever to to be unemployed. eg the ones who don't need it can get it, the ones who need it can't afford it. sickness insurance is another kettle of fish altogether...

and could people afford it...? would it lead to two tier benefits and be socially divisive...? if insurance is not compulsory there will always be a need for a safety net, no change there, and attempts to make it compulsory, eg giving powerful commercial entities with Mammonist ethics life - tax raising powers, quite simply risks revolution.

none of this is new, and the problems are all part of the history of how the NI system arose in the first place...it's also part of the reality that makes public service different from business.
steve - no, sorry, who is prof. Mumford?

Patrick Minford is an economics professor - he was aa TV regular in the 80's expressing his monetarist economic views and arguing that benefits were a disincentive to work. I heard him on the radio the other day. Plus ca plus c'est la meme chose.

Shaun

sacre bleu! !
thanks shaun - rings a faint bell, and i found him in wiki...

It would look even better if there was a way of getting accents and cedillas up on the screen!