Being disabled is expensive and I don’t think abled people (unless they live with a disabled person) realise how expensive it is. Even the people who are fourtunate enough to get full benefits (and many people don’t even when they are entitled to it and need it) and state support are still struggling and can’t afford everything they need.
And yet, Disabled people still have to deal with people saying how lucky they are or how unfair it is that they get “all that extra money” when in reality they are struggling and can’t afford all the care or accessibility they actually need.
Keep thinking about this. It means that the people who receive SSDI can literally NEVER be a part of the group legislating the program. I feel genuinely sick to my stomach…because like…that’s the formal structure. We’ve all accepted this??????????
Watching this documentary short (taken from a longer documentary) about poor kids in Ohio during lockdown. This woman, with three kids, has been told by her doctors that she can’t work due to kidney disease. The state agrees enough to give her *some* benefits, but…she has to volunteer 80 hours a month to receive said benefits. If she’s too sick to work, then she’s too sick to volunteer 20 hours a week. I remember at the end of my “working life”, I finally realized it was time to turn in my papers when I couldn’t manage 18 hours a week. Ohio, wtf is this nonsense?! And in this documentary, it’s during the pandemic. The 13 year old subject of the film says how worried he is about his mom having to be out there volunteering because she’s so likely to catch Covid. I have to imagine a strong case of Covid could do damage to her already vulnerable kidneys. What utter bullshit our whole system is!
Here is the full documentary, an hour long, which I guess I’m gonna watch now so I can get even angrier at our system!
Being disabled is expensive and I don’t think abled people (unless they live with a disabled person) realise how expensive it is. Even the people who are fourtunate enough to get full benefits (and many people don’t even when they are entitled to it and need it) and state support are still struggling and can’t afford everything they need.
And yet, Disabled people still have to deal with people saying how lucky they are or how unfair it is that they get “all that extra money” when in reality they are struggling and can’t afford all the care or accessibility they actually need.
(you can still contact your senators if you’re under 18, or if, like me, you are a green card holder or other immigrant who can’t vote yet.)
This one isn’t a hotbutton issue for Republicans vs Democrats so dont assume that just because you live in a blue state that your reps will definitely vote for it. Make the call.
Or that they WON’T in a red state.
Boost the heck out of this. It is bipartisan legislation, Sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and co-sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). The bill number is S. 4102 and I don’t think it has a House equivalent yet. If you tell your reps to vote for S. 4102 sponsored by Sen. Brown and co-sponsored by Sen. Portman, you could be completely changing the game for disabled married couples. (The Senate has a drop-down menu by state at the top of the website https://www.senate.gov/)
“what do we do about people who fake disabilities to get ssi” we throw them a fucking party for pulling off the most difficult and unrewarding grift of all time. literally i don’t care
i wholeheartedly embrace the fuck-the-systemness solidarity of this and therefore have to make sure i understand both sides … so we’re saying ‘fakes’ do not hurt the ppl with true disabilities who have to fight tooth and nail for benefits?
sadly i have firsthand work experience in this area, via medical office with FT social worker, and i promise, the folks ‘faking’ would be the last people you’d want to party with…thankfully our docs were EXTREMELY rigid about identifying said grifters. honorable mentions, 100% real:
• 40 yo M: “can you just give me disability, i need time away from work to pursue acting career. they don’t give us FMLA or anything”
• mid-aged couple: sentenced to community service by local court, requesting SSID status to exempt them from having to fulfill. the task what assembling mailers
•45 yo F: “i just want the placard for better parking spots at work. can’t you just get the doctor to say i’m disabled?”
•50 yo M: orthopedic injuries presented to obtain opioids and SSID benefits, MD reviews all MRIs and CTs, clean. patient denied both requests. storms out of office, throwing his cervical collar down in waiting area on way out as limp magically disappears
i’ll open myself to critique here, suffice to say, i cannot help but think such characters have not contributed to the current screening state of this program. and anyone not getting what they actually need bc of it is anything short of infuriating for me. it’s super fucked, thinking about every single actually disabled person denied for every person faking that has been approved. not who that limited pool of collected public funds is for.
The grifters you have mentioned are painfullyeasy to identify. Many of the literally told you that they were faking it. They do not nearly justify the incredible difficulty involved in the process of actually getting approved.
You can be fully, provably disabled and you will get denied. People who judge your case often ignore evidence collected from everyone from family members to doctors to deny people. The reasons they give that you can keep working display a stunning amount of ignorance to how disabilities actually work or are intentionally attempting to deny people the tiny pittance of money given to people who desperately need it for basic survival.
The average approval time in my state is 21 months. Nearly two years going without what you desperately need to survive. If you try to earn some money in that time just to keep yourself alive it will be used as evidence against your case. No matter how damaging that work is or how unsustainable it is in the long term. For this reason many disabled people are forced into illegal and dangerous work simply because they cannot survive for two fucking years without any help, such as sex work. If they get caught trying to survive it will be used to deny the claim.
Now one might think that you could maybe save up before hand and make it through the process that way. Not so. With only a few exceptions, if you have at any time in the process more than 2000 dollars to your name it will be used as evidence against you. This 2000 limit will continue indefinitely as long as you are receiving benefits, and the government will monitor your bank account at all times so if it goes over your benefits will be canceled.
They will frequently demand for you to justify how you survived in the intervening period. How did you pay rent? How did you buy food? They will use your answer against you when they make your decision.
The amount of pointless, redundant, and difficult paperwork involved is another major barrier. Of course while they may take upwards of 6 to 9 months each step of the way, but you might receive a piece of mail that you have to respond to within days or it will be used against your case, or your case may be denied outright.
The form I had to initially fill out was 21 pages long. My wife and I both had to fill out another 14 page long document. I had to fill out details on the make and model of my car, because apparently people are worried that I might be driving a sports car. If you car is too nice they will use it against you. You are only allowed one car ever even if practically you really need two.
I attempted to apply for disability a few years ago. I messed up a couple questions because I did not understand them and it was used to deny my claim. I had to start from scratch, including resetting that 21 month waiting period.
The fact that I am a stay at home mom taking care of my daughter best I can is used against me.
The entire process is so strict and difficult to navigate that there are successful businesses called “disability advocates” that are practically required for a successful case. Fortunately their are laws that say they can only get paid if the claim is successful, and there is a cap on how much they cost so its nothing to lose. Of course this involves filling out even more paperwork, communicating with people, more work and more effort.
You need medical professionals to back up your claim or it will almost certainly be denied. Only Doctors are good enough. Mentally disabled and can’t afford several weeks of sessions? Physically disabled but you can’t afford a specialist doctor? Your chances of approval just dropped like a rock.
If at any time you act in such a way that isn’t stereotypically disabled there is a significant chance it will be used against you. The minimum capabilities required to go through the process are practically evidence against your case as well - for example, being capable of a coherent explanation of your symptoms and difficulties, Even if you broke down crying during the interview for a half hour because it is so difficult, is seen as proof that you are “capable of communication”, which was the exact reason given for my last denial. In the minds of the people making the determination I was capable of communication, which meant there had to be some job somewhere I was capable of performing.
If you have good days that fact will be used against you. If you go to an interview and don’t show glaringly obvious symptoms there is a good chance it will mean you will be denied.
The entire process is designed to discourage attempts. It is split into three stages. The first stage has only a 30% approval rate. The people you are talking about above never get far enough to even count against that approval rate. There is evidence in the form of leaked documents that people who do qualify are rejected instead simply to lengthen their approval process and discourage people to get them to drop out of their attempt. The first appeal has around a 10% approval rate. Only at the third stage, an actual court hearing with a judge, is there an approval rate in your favor at just over 50%. These three stages each may last between 6 and 9 months, which is why the approval process takes nearly two years.
At every step you will have to fill out more redundant paper work.
Those approval stats, by the way, are assuming you got one of those disability advocates. If you didn’t your chances drop significantly at every stage.
Almost all of these things are so strict in the name of “catching frauds” who may not absolutely need it.
The process is extremely difficult, humiliating, is difficult to survive, and is likely to fail. Almost no one gets approved their first time attempting the process, even if they plainly on the face of it absolutely need the benefits , because the process is so difficult. So a fraud would have to go through that entire painful process and succeed. So what do they get?
It will be around 700 to 800 dollars a month at most. Not enough to really live on, your going to be making hard choices between medicine, food, and shelter. You wont ever have nice things or live comfortably. And it comes with major restrictions that will force you into poverty and keep you there as long as you are part of the program. Any reasonable attempt you might make to better your own situation will be used to take your benefits away, you are not allowed to lift yourself out of a painful, difficult life of poverty. Many disabled individuals have to continue dangerous and illegal work, like sex work, in order to make ends meet.
By the way, if someone is doing sex work on the side and is caught, that will be reported as “fraudulent” abuse of the system. There are a good deal of other types of “fraud” claims used to deny benefits to people who need them and inflate the reported fraud numbers to justify these harsh screening methods.
This is what is meant by the original post. The screening process is so impossibly over the top and the benefits so little that the idea that fraud is a real problem on any scale is laughable. But it continues to be something people are obsessed over. Obviously we would not like actual frauds, but the entire structure of disability benefits is built around the obsessive attempt to prevent even one fraudulent case no matter how many actual disabled people suffer and die for it. “Fraud” is first and foremost an excuse to deny disabled people the tiny amount of help they desperate need just to survive.
So if somehow in some extremely rare case a person actually goes through that entire extremely difficult process just so they can live in poverty and pain with a pittance of survival money then I literally do not give a single fuck and neither should you. Stop obsessing over the minuscule chance of fraud and start recognizing that the insane screening process and laws in place are not due to supposed fraud attempts, it’s due to a desire from those who put those laws and screening process in place for us to just die because they see us as nothing but a drain on society.
Statistically speaking your “extremely rigid” docs are most likely denying tons of legitimate cases because they do not understand disabilities, which is extremelycommon (far more common than not), and using these honorable mention cases as justification for how good they are at clocking ‘fakes’. They are the reason we have to perform humiliating stereotypes of disability at every turn or be denied. They are virtually certainly one of the biggest parts of the problem.
(you can still contact your senators if you’re under 18, or if, like me, you are a green card holder or other immigrant who can’t vote yet.)
This one isn’t a hotbutton issue for Republicans vs Democrats so dont assume that just because you live in a blue state that your reps will definitely vote for it. Make the call.
Or that they WON’T in a red state.
Boost the heck out of this. It is bipartisan legislation, Sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and co-sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). The bill number is S. 4102 and I don’t think it has a House equivalent yet. If you tell your reps to vote for S. 4102 sponsored by Sen. Brown and co-sponsored by Sen. Portman, you could be completely changing the game for disabled married couples. (The Senate has a drop-down menu by state at the top of the website https://www.senate.gov/)
(you can still contact your senators if you’re under 18, or if, like me, you are a green card holder or other immigrant who can’t vote yet.)
This one isn’t a hotbutton issue for Republicans vs Democrats so dont assume that just because you live in a blue state that your reps will definitely vote for it. Make the call.
Or that they WON’T in a red state.
Boost the heck out of this. It is bipartisan legislation, Sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and co-sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). The bill number is S. 4102 and I don’t think it has a House equivalent yet. If you tell your reps to vote for S. 4102 sponsored by Sen. Brown and co-sponsored by Sen. Portman, you could be completely changing the game for disabled married couples. (The Senate has a drop-down menu by state at the top of the website https://www.senate.gov/)
Marriage equality for all.
LISTEN. THIS IS PRIDE MONTH. MARRIGAE EQUALITY. DO IT IF YOURE AMERICAN.
