There is a resent precedence for this…Do it now.


Tikki

Tikki

A review of a person's disability is always a possibility.

They have to prove it before they get the grant of disability.

Can be some reviews on others.

What jobs are available for the disabled? Some small communities barely have jobs for able bodied adults let alone managers who are able to supervise, train and provide appropriate physical accommodations. Will the disabled be forced to move to a different city, away from their family and support system?
Let's put these fools in a wheelchair, or in glasses that visually impair them and see how fast they find a job. Scumbag a**holes!

Whether they can get a job or not is irrelevant. It is about taking them off disability. Remember Ryan believes that being disabled means people are encourages people not to work. If they don't get any money they will look for work whatever the hell that logic means.

I'm legally blind and a acf certified chef graduated from a great culinary school but they see my vision problems they're really hesitant to hire me

You can probably see well enough to make a great meal..but because your are 'legally blind' you cannot be hired...

Maybe you should send your resume to individual millionaires/billionaires???

on them so I have to be told what it is at where I'm at or take the ticket down and read it I have 20/800 and 20/700 vision.

Submit your resume to a some millionaire or billionaire...you have all the requirements...

I've done that type of work before on a limited basis. Doing some dinner parties and such for wealthier families back in NYC. I don't have the same network since moving to Houston but I will probably get my name out there for that.

Very impressive. Best of luck to you.

You've probably accomplished things I haven't. We all excel in our own ways

he recently closed his restaurant to focus on his high-end catering business!

P.S. I'm curious. How do you find the access at DU? I'm often guilty of substituting smilies for words, as in "George W. Bush is a warmongering ."

I have a keyboard designed for the visually impaired plus screen reader/text to speech software. Combined with the Brower magnification being at 200%. It's really cool that the chef you mentioned is deaf blind. I didn't have as hard of a time finding a job in NYC but moving to Houston I ran into problems getting hired.

So, the Rs want a requirement that already exists anyway.

fuck them

The ultimate logic of the GOP is that only makers have rights. Everyone else. Tough shit! That is all I ever hear from GOPPERS any more.

we hate everyone


List of groups the GOP hates.


1. Women
2. Children
3. The Poor (non working)
4. The Poor ( working)
5. Disabled
6. Sick people who need a doctor
7.Union members
8. non- white
9. non- "Christians"
10.Veterans
11. U.S. Troops
12. Anyone not Conservative
13. People who think for themselves
14. non-racist
15. LGBT
16. The elderly
17. Actual Americans

Add more..

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2013, 12:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Four friends of mine are collecting disability checks. One of them is legitimately disabled. The other three are collecting checks because their knee hurts, or whatever. Two of those three are actually holding down solid under-the-table jobs! And don't tell me I don't know the entire story with those three. I do.

And I know about hurt knees. I've had childhood arthritis since, well, forever.

What does all this say about the disability pool as a whole? Nothing, actually. My one friend who is legitimately disabled is in severe financial straights, and his check is a lifeline.

Here's one thing I'm sure of. If my other three friends had to annually prove their "disabilities", hopefully their scams would be unmasked and there would be more money available for those who really need it.

Of course, it's also possible that the money saved would go to tanks or battleships instead. But that's another depressing thread.

Sure, there are some who want to do away with the program all together, but wanting to try to cut out fraud doesnt mean you're against the program. Some here think questioning ANY recipient means you hate everybody on it.

is bound to have some fraud and abuse. That the way it is. Always has been, always will be.

But the fraud perpetrated against the SSI or SSDI systems is a miniscule fraction of what we see in the military-industrial-Congressional complex as SOP. One figure I saw said that the Pentagon over the past fifteen years was unable to account for more than a TRILLION dollars of taxpayer money.

I doubt whatever fraud exists in the disability safety net rises to even a single percent of that. And yet, how many Republicans have gone on any sort of crusade against DOD fraud and abuse?

No, this is just another instance of Republicans trying to pit low information voters against some of the most vulnerable people in our society, to deflect attention from the real rip-off artists, the real "welfare cheats" in the Defense Department and on Wall Street.

So I have no tolerance at all with people pushing that line, and very little patience with those who fall for it.

BTW: the Sixty Minutes story on "disability fraud" had about as much credibility as its recent blockbuster on Benghazi. After it aired there was a flurry of stories pointing out all its inaccuracies and distortions. So it's no wonder you got a heated reaction.

they don't.

The 60 Mins thing merely brought up the subject for me. And I, like the poster above I was responding to, know of a couple good examples. Where I differed with others is the scope of fraud in the disability system. We've had an explosion of claims over just a few years with no reason to all of a sudden have millions more disabled. Some blamed the economy. But the only legal reason to get SSDI is to actually BE disabled. And when more and more people are not caught, it will hurt the credibility of the system. And I do know how tough it can be to get on the system; I have a family member who went through all the visits and dr paperwork, etc. I just dont understand why anyone would have a problem going after cheats. If it was known there was a good chance you'd get caught, that alone would lessen the problem.

Another point on the military, we have over 1000 bases overseas. We could save a ton of money by closing a lot of those. I never see anybody mentioning that on TV it seems. Now, I'm not one to say we shouldnt have a presence out there, its just that we dont need THAT much. Hell, theres not even 200 countries in the whole world!

We have people who have substantial disabilities, who were able to work at their jobs, suddenly laid off. Many are in their fifties, some in their sixties, with absolutely zero chance of ever being able to find a job again. And so they apply for SSDI--which, by the way, you have to pay into in order to qualify, like any other kind of insurance. What else are they supposed to do, starve?

And then we have demographics, another huge factor. The baby boomers are aging. A part of growing old is becoming disabled in one way or another. We've known for decades that this surge in the number of people with disabilities was coming, but like most long term issues our political system did absolutely nothing to prepare for this. People who've worked for decades, and are now in their late fifties, early sixties, are finding it more and more difficult to adjust to and work around their disabilities, and so are dropping out of the workforce, not by choice, but by necessity. SSDI, in general, is only a fraction of what an average person earns in the workplace. It's an almost immediate drop into poverty. Most people don't choose this of their own free will. They're compelled by the sheer physical or psychological inability to continue working. So this whole "explosion" in SSDI claims is, to my mind, pretty explicable, and all the "concerns" about it are part of the GOP deflection campaign.

By all means, let's root out fraud, where ever it is. But to use this or that anecdote to somehow smear the whole system is a typical Republican trick, like Reagan with his "welfare queen buying vodka" (which, BTW, turned out to be yet another one of his BS stories).

I know lots of folks with disabilities, and can regale you with dozens of stories of people who had to wait YEARS to get on SSDI, all the while trying to live on their savings, on help from friends and family, on charity. Somehow, those stories never make it into the MSM.

Check out the "smart-ass cripple" blog I posted in this thread (post 31) for examples of folks who get "free money" because of their disabilities.

This is all part of the GOP/Heritage Foundation war on the poor, and since people with disabilities constitute a hugely disproportionate number of poor, this inevitably turns into a war on the disabled.

If you personally know people who are defrauding the system, there's nothing stopping you from turning them in. But before you do, you should be absolutely certain of your facts. Some disabilities are hidden. Some are intermittant--preventing someone from holding a job, but not always evident to the outside world. My experience is that these are the folks who get tagged as '"frauds" by outsiders--which only adds to their troubles. I'd hate to be the one to make someone's life that much more difficult, just because I had a suspicious mind, a lack of information about disability, and a willingness to swallow GOP BS.

BTW, if you want to check out what can happen when we see this sort of concerted campaign against SSI and SSDI, read "No Longer Disabled: the Federal Courts and the Politics of Social Security Disability" by Susan Gluck Mercy, about how the Reagan administration attempted to gut the program, leading to deaths, in some cases suicides, of people deemed "no longer disabled." The situation got so bad Congress had to pass a law (the Social Security Disability Reform Act of 1984) to stop some of the worst abuses by the Reagan administration. At that time more than 40,000 people had to file federal lawsuits to get the benefits to which they were entitled--this AFTER their doctors and the SSDI bureacracy had already ruled in their favor. In 1996, when the Republicans again had power in Congress, they forced through changes in SSI that cut more than 100,000 disabled kids off the rolls.

So we've been through this shit before, which is why I get so frustrated, seeing it all again.

Best wishes.

What I got from the 60 Minutes hit piece ...they didn't talk to one doctor.

You got people hating on the disabled out there when they could not possibly get into the SSDI program without help
from doctor(s). The disabled must be great at manipulating and bamboozling docs to go through the grueling paperwork to get folks approved for SSDI.

I should have stopped working 10 years before I did because it would have made my life and my body
a whole lot happier - but I kept plugging along in pain everyday making my muscles weaker and more painful.
I listened to the naysayers saying I would never get approved - turns out, yes I would have been approved
without much protest.

Recently I was yelled at by a security guard for asking for a chair,"I"m so sick of you people and your problems" ... All this hating on the disabled is catching on thanks to Tom Coburn and the right wing media. It's so easy to blame the disabled for those who might not "deserve" it. Do I know people who are working, disabled and on SSDI, yes...in pain, on several medications, but mostly part time. This one man I know, a Vietnam vet has MS - he keeps working, but on Sunday's he get's his interferon injection and stays in bed for two days, then it's off to the part-time job again so he can afford to buy the meds. You know, they let you work and you can make up to $1000 per month. If I could work part-time, I would because I am a burden to my family financially.

No excuse for that kind of behavior.

their cases should all be reviewed periodically. That's how the system works. Under "continuing disability reviews" each person on SSDI has to go through a process of proving they are too disabled to work, which generally means getting a doctor to sign off on this, and being reviewed in-house by an SSDI evaluation. For some this happens every three years, the longest you might go is seven years--generally for people who are quadriplegics or have MS or have gone blind or something similar, where little or no medical improvement is expected.

For something like knee injury, the review can occur in as little as eighteen months after the initial evaluation. (And keep in mind, in order to get SSDI to begin with, you have to be out of work for at least a year, and medically certified as disabled).

Go to the Social Security website (http://www.ssa.gov) and google "continuing disability review" for more details.

If you really think your friends are ripping off the system, you can always turn them in. But before you do, make certain you know all the details. Sometimes people appear to be less disabled than they actually are.

To institute annual reviews, which is my understanding of what Republicans are proposing, would probably cost more money than it will save. To me, this is just another BS attempt to make poor people and disabled people jump through hoops and feel like shit.

Most of us will be there someday: too disabled to work, poor, relying on one system or other. So maybe we shouldn't be quite so reflexively judgemental about the people who are already there.

What you clearly don't know is how much people who have disabilities would love to work. That definition is a barrier for people who have disabilities. A person may e able to work with some supports but lose access to the supports as soon as they go to work.

The determination of ability to work is also based on work history. A person who has physical injuries that prevent them from doing the construction or other physically demanding work is eligible for disability when that is the only kind of work they have done.
Also the increasing numbers are a natural response to aging of millions of baby boomers. As people age the develop impairments. Sometimes before they can collect retirement SS.

AND, your three friends most likely do have to prove that they are disabled. I do- every 3-7 yrs.

You seem pretty outraged by them: http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/48/

Oh and by the way - you can work if you get SSDI - up to $1000 per month with conditions.

... if you can crawl, you can work.

on the glories of "cashing in on one's disability"


Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Free Money

As you know, I spent five of my adolescent years as an inmate in a state-operated boarding school for cripples, aka the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). Well I heard a rumor that one of my fellow inmates is now a multimillionaire. I checked into it to find out how the hell he managed to do that, because everyone wants to know the secrets of how the rich get rich. From what I heard, he pretty much became rich overnight. And anyone who’s really determined to get rich can do exactly what he did.

Here’s the story I heard:

My fellow inmate was born with cerebral palsy. A couple decades after leaving the cripple school, he took a vacation. He landed at the airport and a vehicle with a wheelchair lift was dispatched to take him to his destination. En route, the vehicle crashed. And because the driver did not tie down my friend’s wheelchair, he went flying, chair and all. My friend broke his neck and now he’s a cripple squared-- a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy.

But here’s the lucky part. His destination was a Vegas casino and the vehicle was the van the casino used for toting crippled guests. So I ask you, if you’re going to sue somebody for making you crippled, could you present a jury with a more unsympathetic villain than a Vegas casino? My friend collected $8 million, so I’m told.

Okay so who’s ready to get out there and strike it rich the same way my friend did? How about it? Let’s see a show of hands! Who’s with me? Anybody? Hello?

Come on! It’s easy! You’ll never have to work again! It’s free money!

There are some cripples who never worked a day in their lives and they get free money every month from the government. Anyone can get in on this scam, too. All you have to do is become crippled. You’ll receive about $550 a month from Social Security, so you’ll have just about enough cash to live a nice, spacious, wheelchair-accessible port-a-potty. Oh and in order to keep your checks coming, you also have to take a solemn vow that for the rest of your life you will remain as broke as a crack whore.

Any takers? And no, you can’t have the monthly check without the crippledness and the poverty. It’s the whole package or nothing.

Nobody? Going once, going twice... Maybe it’s not such a sweet gig after all, eh? I know the feeling. I’ll tell you which cripples used to make me jealous. I’m jealous of the ones who get big fat book deals! Talk about free money! That’s got to be the sweetest gig of all! I used to think I’d do anything to land a big fat book deal. But then I heard about this guy who wrote a bestseller about how a bear ripped his face off. And it wasn’t fiction.

No thanks. I’d rather be a broke and obscure writer who never had his face ripped off by a bear.

That’s how it is with all those cripples and their free money. It surely ain’t free.

***
From my reading of this, Republicans (AKA the empathy-impaired) want to add yet another hurdle for smart-ass cripples like Mike Ervin to jump over (figurately speaking).

Having some experience with the disability system, I can tell you it's a hassle and a half--nearly a full-time job--proving to the system you're too disabled to work and need some assistance. And the assistance you get (aside from Medicaid) is a pittance.

Republicans have their own severe disability--they have no heart. No heart, but lots of spleen, and a shitload of gall, pushing this sort of nonsense.

I've had them before, but this one was a little different.

Past letters were just a simple fill this out affair, this one came with a multi page instruction sheet with a thinly veiled threat of "we will notify you whether or not we need to do a full medical review", which I've never seen in the last 4 continuing claim forms I've sent over the last 12 years.

Depending on what the person is disabled by the way the law is written is anyone who is allowed SS disability or SSI will have their claim reviewed every 3 or 7 years (although in real life it varies) to see if they have made medical improvement.

Some conditions improve, some do not. There has been talk of some coding of some impairments so severe that common sense would tell you would never improve in order to save money.

In general most people are continued.

During Reagans term they changed the listings and made them tougher then all the people who had been allowed under the old listings got reviewed under the new and a LOT got cut off. There was a HUGE shit storm and they acttually halted doing CDR's for a while until they formulated new rules.

The new rules basically stated that even if the listings got tougher you were re evaluated based on the criteria you were allowed on.

The ironic thing about this is if somebody is allowed at the initial or reconsideration level they are usually worse than if they were allowed by the ALJ. For instance I knew somebody once allowed by an ALJ for having the tip of one finger cut off.

So say somebody was allowed at the initial level they get some better and get cut off, where somebody far less impaired is allowed by the ALJ and he was continued because he hadn't got better but there was very little wrong with him in the first place.

However most people reviewed CDR are continued and there is a generally understood thing you don't go looking for things to cut these people off over.

There ARE a fair number of CDR claims that are cut off due to failure to comply. Sad to say, because they get Medicaid and stuff= but for many people allowed, the last medical treatment they received was right before they were allowed for disability. So then they have to go to an exam to show how they are doing because they have had no treatment sometimes for 10 years. Well a lot of these people they just can not get it together to go to an exam, even if it's scheduled 2 months in advance, and rescheduled 3 times. So they get cut off because there's just no medical to show how they are currently doing.

But anyway CDR's are not new and really nothing to worry about as long as you are no better and if you have not seen a doctor in several years you are able to keep an appointment.

base on emotion.

full disability, I'm all for it. Sorry, that guy just landed on a nerve for me.

She's been out of the workforce for several years due to an irreversible and disabling condition...
A couple of months ago, she was ordered to an independent physician for a 'review of her case', rather than the review paperwork being filled-out by the primary care physician and the specialist who have been in charge of her medical care and are familiar with her condition, limitations, and course of treatment.

We talked at length after the 'independent assessment', and she was scared to death that she may not only lose her disability income, but worse will lose her medical care... The physician she saw was prosecutorial in her manner, and really shook her up emotionally.

She's gotten no word back yet on the outcome (because, naturally, the report goes straight to the government -- without her getting a copy)... if she's denied, she plans to appeal, because her condition prevents her from doing most anything that requires her to be upright-in-a-chair or on her feet for longer than 20 minutes per hour.

With seniors moving into the service sector jobs, where will they find work?

Right on my acceptance letter it said my case would be reviewed every five years. They want to see if anything has improved.

Disability has always required proof of disability to qualify. Often, like my brother there is some kind of medication that actually works so they check up on the client to see if their status is still the same. My brother has severe bipolar and other digestive problems and has never been able to return to work.

proof that you can't work before you get disability. I wouldn't be shocked if there was a review type process if you have been on it for a few years. Maybe it depends on the type of disability.

The problem is that some people need to pay for their own doctors to prove they are disabled so if the government wants to pay for it, it would be a good thing. if they have agoraphobia the government doctor should go to the house. i.e. make it convenient

I know people who have cheated on disability, I also know people who have disabilities that can't get on disability, a friend who's kidneys went into failure, but had not worked for several years and had just re-entered the job market, and had worked for years before. - her husband left her when her kidney's failed because he did not want to pay all those medical bills and their son with disabilities had grown and could survive on his own in a group home.