#social security

eponinejosette:

too-many-problems-to-list:

my-mad-fat-fibro-diary:

Please stop excluding disabled people in your posts about minorities who are being affected by the election results. Disabled people in the US are being affected too and we matter.

People have no idea how terrified every disabled person is. I’m not going to minimize any other group rightfully terrified; I just want people to know there’s a group you’re all forgetting. Republicans have been trying to destroy social security forever. Riled up old folks, a key part of their base, have stopped them so far. But those were “reasonable” republicans like we had 10 years ago. Pre-tea party “burn it all down!” ideological zealots.

Now? There’s nothing to stop them. Except all of us. In the same way we have to protect LGBTQ, women, racial groups, we MUST protect the disabled. Because dismantlement of social security, Medicare and Medicaid are LETHAL to the disabled. Who already constantly struggle financially. If they cut benefits 1%? 5%? 10%? Well when you’re struggling on $800 or $1200 a month… do the math.

And we disabled? We literally can’t march in protest. Because most of us are, well, not able! So we’re dependent on you all to help keep us alive. Because while Republicans might claim empathy for us, they’re priorities are monetary. They’ll couch it in “cutting waste” or making social security stable “longer” or giving power to “states” to run things. “Efficiency” and such are the things they’ll pretend to be seeking. But its just code.

So please, please, help the disabled just as we help LGBTQ, just as we help racial minorities, just as we help women. We’re in this together. But the disabled can’t even go protest in the streets or march on Washington or any of that. We need you all to be our bodies, while we use our only tool: our voices.

Just want to say here, the most you can get on SSI is $733… That’s already not survivable. We can’t afford for it to get cut more. Plus he wants to cap medicaid/medicare coverage. Which means not only do we not get enough to survive on, we’re also going to lose our healthcare. Millions are going to die just because of the ACA repeal alone because we won’t be able to get insurance due to preexisting conditions. You NEED to fight for us because we can’t. I have been stuck at home terrified for the past 3 days planning how to survive for as long as possible and for when I die. This is real. We know its going to happen. We are planning our own funerals. We are already mourning our loved ones. You better fight for us.

For the last few years, a lot of people have expressed how much they miss President Obama, and I do miss some aspects of his personality and his presidency: an intelligent, affable, charismatic person who helped make marriage equality an acceptable idea for many, he signed the executive order for DACA. He invested significant political capital to enact the Iran nuclear deal, which staved off the threat of war with Iran. It was historically important to have a black person as president, too. Bin Laden was killed under his watch, so there’s that, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has some good aspects like providing protections for pre-existing conditions. He repealed Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, too, and the stock market was far more stable in 2016 than it was in 2009.

However, there were plenty downsides to his presidency that we should consider. While he technically ended torture as an American policy, he increased drone bombing and bombed seven nations at a time in 2016 alone. He regime changed Libya illegally, leading to the country’s collapse, and attempted to regime change Syria in a fairly drawn-out, agonizing process. The Democratic Party lost Congress and countless state legislatures and governorships to Republicans under his watch, and he failed to leverage his movement for change after his election in 2008. I don’t miss his drive to enact the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a gift to corporations and a slap in the face to workers and democratic processes, either.

Moreover, I don’t miss him going easy on the Bush administration for committing war crimes or his expansion of the surveillance state or setting the precedent for killing American citizens without due process. He waited until the very last minute to intervene at Standing Rock, and he was behind almost 2 million deportations. He used the Espionage Act to crack down on journalists and leakers at an unprecedented level. He also failed to demand at the very least a public option in the ACA after endorsing a single payer system during the 2008 election. He made numerous corporatist executive appointments like Arne Duncan and Larry Summers. He let the big banks off the hook after the financial crisis. He proposed cuts to Social Security, and–relatedly–he had the tendency to negotiate from the center with Republicans who had no desire to negotiate in the first place. And while the stock market might have grown during his presidency, so did wealth inequality. Even though corporate profits soared, poverty barely decreased.

Obama began his presidency with the promise of transformational change. Eight years later, though, one could argue that any number of centrist Democrats could have replicated his legacy. Ultimately, I can understand why people miss him; I prefer Obama to Trump. I know people find his presidency inspiring, and I did, too, for a time. However, I also have no desire to romanticize the Obama administration. We need to look at his legacy soberly. If we do not, we will think that what he achieved is as good as we can get and that a return to Obama-era “normalcy” in 2020 and beyond will set the country on an acceptable track. It will not. America deserves better than the results of the Obama presidency.

firespirited:

ambienkitchen:

“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

ah yes the benefits grift where you can’t get married, can’t have savings and get a pittance. the one that accounts for 0.3% of fraud compared to the other 99.7% in tax frauds and various corporate grants and writeoffs. took me 14 years of being nearly bedbound to get approved because we hadn’t ticked all the right boxes in the correct order.

America wants to punish you for being disabled. Change my mind.

Lord, lord, lord. I came precariously close to disaster in the last 48 hours.

On Tuesday, I got a call from my government case worker, saying she wanted to do a home visit. I immediately knew what it was about. When she showed up the next day, the first words out of her mouth were, “You’ve been bad. If you don’t comply with Social Security, we will close your case in ten days.”

“Closing my case” would leave me homeless, without food or HIV drugs, and probably dead within a year.

As I have previously mentioned on this blog, I am enrolled in a program called HASA. “HASA” stands for New York City’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration, and it is a division of New York City’s Human Resources Administration, known as HRA, or more commonly, “the welfare office.”

HASA provides you with a standard of living which is well below the poverty line. It allocates you with a few basic things: often sub-par health care, food stamps, a very modest cash grant each month (very modest — so you can buy, like, toothpaste and toilet paper), and a small shelter stipend.

Most people who receive that shelter stipend live in SROs, which are single-room-occupancy dwellings, or, more colloquially, “group homes.” These are not nice places. There is very little state oversight for disability housing. Violence, vermin, intimidation and abuse are quite common.

Here’s the thing: HASA is a municipal program, run by the city of New York. Of course, this costs money (not that much money in the grand scheme of things, but that’s a whole other post). HRA would much rather foist off its clients (or, as we’re referred to, “consumers”) to the federal government.

Thus, every HASA client is required by law to apply for Social Security Insurance/Social Security Disability Insurance (or SSI/SSDI). These are national programs that provide, basically, the shittiest social safety net for some of the most vulnerable people in the US: the elderly, the disabled, and poor kids.

The problem with SSI/SSDI is that it’s almost impossible to qualify for unless you’re over 65 (and even that may change soon.) To be considered “disabled” by Social Security, you more-or-less have to be blind and deaf and have no arms or legs or something. Only a tiny fraction of the people who apply are accepted to the program.

(Caveat: the above statement is circumstantially hyperbolic. There is a way to qualify for SSI/SSDI, and that is to get a good lawyer to handle your case. And, surprisingly, the lawyers that advertise on daytime television during Judge Judy do an exceptionally good job at winning these cases.)

So, I have to apply for SSDI. I will not get accepted for SSDI. I know this, my case worker knows this, and HRA knows this. But I am required to act *as if* it is a possibility that I will be accepted.

The process of applying for SSDI is pretty humiliating. You schedule an interview, wait for two months, and go in and talk to a stranger about your entire life history and all your problems. Then, you have to get your doctor to fill out a medical report confirming your medical problems (this in and of itself is difficult, as I see a public health physician who has 600 patients.)

Then, you are required to be examined by two creepy state-appointed doctors, which (speaking particularly as a transgender person who is shy about strangers touching and seeing my body), is really ramps up that “humiliating” factor.

Then, you will receive a decision letter from SSDI. You will be inevitably denied. Then you have to file an appeal, and appear in front of a judge (*another* incredibly anxiety-producing experience, especially for people who have been formerly incarcerated, had bad experiences with family court, who have outstanding warrants, you name it — and these folks, perhaps not unsurprisingly, make up a large chunk of people living with HIV in the US).

Then, the judge will take one look at you, and will reject your case. This entire process, of course, is big waste of many, many people’s time.

But you know what’s the most cynical, depraved part of the whole cycle? Once you are denied, you have to start the process all over again. Because somehow, they magically hope that you will get approved next time? In fact, the city is kind of hoping that your health will deteriorate to the point where they can kick you out of their programs and make you the federal government’s problem.

HERE IS THE KICKER, THOUGH: EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS ENTIRE PROCESS IS A COMPLETE JOKE. Even my worker says, look, it’s just a game, and you gotta play the game. It’s two warring, bizarre, Kafka-esque systems fighting over pennies for poor people.

Lately, they’ve been cracking down on people who haven’t been keeping up with this byzantine system. I had let my last appointment slide, and they flagged me in the system. I recently spoke with a public health guy who said that by making this process more rigorous, they’re hoping to kick more people off welfare. THANKS, NEW COMMUNIST MAYOR. My roommate has taken to calling Bill DiBlasio “Slick Willy,” because he reminds us so much of Bill Clinton: all promises and too many compromises with the ultra-rich — though, shrug. Only time will tell.

Fortunately, though sheer hustle, and waiting for about six hours in various government offices, I got it all straightened out. Which buys me a few more months not having to worry about, you know, terrible catastrophe.

HOWEVER, AS ALWAYS, PARTYBOTTOM ASCRIBES TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BYOPMA: BRING YOUR OWN POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE. In that spirit, I noticed something really interesting today.

These government offices are kind of gross, but there’s a silver lining. They may be dirty. They may have terrible lighting. The chairs might be uncomfortable. Sometimes fist fights break out between clients, and sometimes people with severe mental illness start screaming at the top of their lungs. But sometimes, something magical happens.

Today, when I was in the Social Security office, I was eavesdropping on a conversation between two strangers. One was giving the other advice on how to apply for food stamps. This is not the first time I’ve seen this go down — in these weird liminal spaces, total strangers who share nothing but the commonality of poverty — well, somehow we all manage to form some sense of solidarity. We make small talk. We encourage each other. We share advice about what we have learned about the system. We make sure that we are taken care of. In small, understated, undramatic ways, we show each other tiny acts of love.

And there is beauty in that.