Original sentence: A second key feature is that recipients are periodicallt re-assessed— a reflection of a policy belief that most conditions will improve over time, either spontaneously or as a result of medical intervention
Edited sentence: A second key feature is that recipients are liable to be repeatedly probed by a government-approved nurse about their state of health — a reflection of a policy belief that most conditions will improve over time, either spontaneously or as a result of medical intervention.In 2016 the government published a Green Paper envisaging an overhaul of ESA (no action has been taken).In 2018, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) began to repay money to ESA recipients who had been inaccurately assessed.It has not achieved its aim — despite tougher eligibility criteria, "conditionality", and multiple medicals for established recipients — of reducing the sickness benefit caseload by one million by 2018.New Labour legislated for ESA at the very end of the Blair era and it became the main out-of-work sickness benefit for new claims during the financial crisis of 2007-2008.One of his successors, Damian Green, added that it was “pointless” to repeatedly assess people with permanent disabilities.The Coalition’s long-serving Welfare Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, eventually concluded that ESA was “fundamentally flawed”.The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was quick to extend its scope: ministers gave the go-ahead for a compulsory reassessment of all long-term recipients of ESA’s predecessors and the transfer of those confirmed as unfit for work onto ESA.The department's approved health professionals had controversially gauged long-term claimants' disabilities against the DWP's new medical criteria, but the DWP itself had not tried to reassess their financial situation: evidence of any deterioration was not sought by the department, so none was taken into account when calculating what type of ESA was appropriate, and the rate of payment