Our nation will look like India with disabled beggars on the streets hoping to survive just one more day - but often failing to.

There is the Repuke Nirvana for you.

disability some kind of "welfare cheaters."

application - unless the injury is extreme- like quadriplegia -

It is a humiliating and degrading.


I find it amusing the author of that piece failed to speak to that.

Maybe she just found a county where everyone who applies gets rubber stamped.

And this was in Texas, when I could no longer work after I had worked for four years--when my condition started acting up again.

I was denied the first three times; the fourth time, I came armed only with the truth and I was accepted for disability in 1984.

I decided the must hire two year olds. Their first response is "No,"

What would NPR have them do, fuck off and die?

Well, that's actually the GOP plan.

If you are poor enough to qualify for SSI based on income you are severely hurting financially and have my sympathy. No one should be put in that position or have to deal with the dehumanizing bureaucracy required to get help.

Next up on NPR, the series "Are poor people really THAT poor?", "Should we harvest the healthy organs of those on disability to protect the health of our nations job creators?", and "Let's create jobs by allowing poor people to be hunted for sport".

I was amazed that they didn't mention (and apparently didn't consider) that we have more people on disability because they've damaged themselves working long hours and/or multiple jobs in unsafe conditions. It's not easy to get disability, nor does it pay very much, but this report veered pretty close to the old "welfare queen" meme.

"Americans don't have the skills for today's job market"
"The disabled are growing because it's better than looking for work"

Both are bullshit meant to obfsucate the bigger labor picture. The workforce is shrinking because the people that run this country want us all to work for less money. As the workforce shrinks employers create arbitrary educational ("Seeking office help for filing and data entry, Bachelor's degree required&quot and ability barriers.

At the one end it creates a market for expensive and unnecessary education and on the other it creates a social need to widen the safety net.

If there were more jobs, a rational set of educational demands would prevail, and employers would have to accept employees with imperfect levels of ability.

Personality Disorder can be grounds for disability claims. One of the hallmarks of that disorder is 100% manipulation in all relationships. Such people can be absolutely unmitigated USERS of any and all others and if you ever met one, it is possible that you would not know, they CAN be that good at it.

On a different note: One does hear stories like "Just say that you think about suicide all of the time and you will be approved for disability" and being pretty intimately acquainted with depression myself, I know how "disabling" it can be, especially within the context of our medical model, SICKNESS defined, "health" "care" systems.

Please support HR 676 Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, linked on Physicians for a National HEALTH Program front page here: http://www.pnhp.org/

pittance being given to people on disability. One bailout would probably take care of every American for a couple of years.

Can't get on the Right Wing bandwagon about the poor getting a little help to survive while we give trillions in welfare to Wall St.

I ain't holding my breath...

Welfar before seeing your comment! This anti help the poor and disabled while ignoring the trillions in Corporate welfare, is right wing garbage, imho.

People who are poor will do whatever they can to get money. If welfare is cut off and they still cannot find work, they will try another route.

The sad fact of life is this.. It costs money to live, and people will do whatever they have to to get some.
SSI/Welfare is nowhere near the amount needed for a comfortable life, but every little bit helps.

If we truly want to stop the system from being gamed, we just need to offer real jobs to able-bodied people, and financial aid/housing/food to people who are unable to work.

It was a demeaning process where his case worker told him he was lucky to be on welfare. She repeated to him over and over again he was on welfare and should be grateful. Told him he had never really worked and should try finding a job. She tried to shame him for being ill. He finally couldn't take her degrading remarks any longer and stood up took his shirt off and asked if she would like to trade bodies. She could have cared less.

My son was diagnosed with Juvenile Dermatomyositis in 1991 at age 13. He spent the next ten years in and out of remission with very long stays at CHLA. He lost so much muscle that he was in a wheel chair for over a year and a walker for another six months. Physical Therapy was expensive and our insurance would not cover us for more than 90 days of a qualifying illness. When he turned eighteen he started working but relapsed before his 20th birthday and was back at CHLA for a three month stay. It was at that time we started the process of getting him on SSI. It took almost two years for his approval and he has to do a review every other year. Because of the years of active disease and side effects of the many drugs (methotrexate, cyclosporine and prednisone were just a few of many) prescribed to control the disease, his body is like that of a 70 year old man. He has osteoporosis, brittle bones, high blood pressure, heart, kidney and liver damage. His body weight is about 95 pounds and he stands 5'4", with very little muscle mass.

Medical care for those on SSI is a joke and many like my son go without regular follow-up care. This is just one of the many reasons we need medicare for all.

There may be a few who don't really need SSI but it is minuscule and not the problem that some try to make it out to be. We have no problem spending billions of dollars on MIC but begrudge what little we do for our poor or disabled.

Articles like this really piss me off. They have little or no knowledge how SSI works or the difficulty in qualifying for those benefits.
Like $721.00 a month affords a place to live let alone food and other essentials. My son is luckier than most because he at least has family he can live with, that is the only reason he is not homeless like so many of our disabled.

If only someone had treated Henry Paulson that way when he demanded billions in Corporate Welfare to help pay the gambling debts he and his Wall St. buddies racked up, not to mention the covering of their crimes.

Instead he was treated like a King. The photos of him with smiling elected officials, who normally would refuse that kind of hand out for anyone else, tells us a lot about where this country is.

in your son's shoes. I'll bet they'd change their tune pretty quickly. Who in their right mind would trade their health for a paltry disability check?

Thanks for sharing your son's story.

It is an earned benefit, paid for by payroll deduction over the working life of the employee.

SSI is a for those who had the misfortune of becoming disabled before they could establish any meaningful work history.

Thank you.

Most of them either never have been able to work since childhood, or who have worked, but not long enough to qualify for SSDI before they became disabled.

In order to become eligible for SSDI, you have to have worked long enough to earn "work credits" before becoming disabled. SSI is based on financial need; in other words, it's means-tested and you have to be damn near destitute as well as totally disabled to qualify for it.

http://ssa.gov/dibplan/index.htm#a0=0

Severe arthritis. It took over a year, a lawyer and numerous appeals for him to get on disability so his family wouldn't be homeless while he was out of work. After his third replacement, he is back to work and doing well. SSDI was a nightmare.

Let's ignore the true problem in this country which is the 1% screwing us over. Instead let's fight amongst ourselves and judge those on disability. Fuck that we must unite and fight for the change that is necessary. Otherwise all of us will be eating each other because there will be nothing left for us

... the latest "you are a bunch of lazy moochers" meme is back for yet another performance here.

Did I click to the wrong link? I thought there were Democrats here.

no vacation and low pay lead to early chronic sickness and disability.

I think I may put this entire topic on ignore.

47% comments he made at that private fundraiser!

Usually, I like both PM and TAL, but Chana Joffe-Walt was flashing her privilege on this one. She's clearly never done physical labor to pay her rent, because she finds it shocking that middle aged, rural poor folk might not be able to find a desk job and totally does not understand how utterly damaging it is to lift 50 pounds sixty times an hour for eight or ten hours a day, every day, or to walk forty miles a day on concrete, or how devastating a repetitive stress injury really is.

She also clearly doesn't understand that SSI/SSDI are absolutely marginal living, and that nobody's getting rich or even surviving on that pitiful check. She didn't connect first of the month grocery and yard sales with grinding poverty, that when people can only afford to buy for two weeks of the month, everyone hurts.

That hour on Sunday and the segments this week have made me furious.

Edit for spelling