Thales,
I’m not sure who wrote that, nor what their axe was to grind, so to speak. But I’ve known some people in dire straits who got turned down for SSI, and SSD. It’s just NOT that easy.
I have a cousin in NYC who has tried to work, but she has been Bipolar since she was 15 or 16. She has worked a few times over the years from time to time, but she can’t hang.
One of the problems with people who are Bipolar is that after some amount of time they think they’re OK now, and they stop taking their meds. Then, in a few weeks they spiral in and, in my cousins case, someone has to step in and take care of them, or have them committed.
A few years ago, while she was in the hospital after not taking her drugs as written, she was hospitalized. While she was IN the hospital, she was notified that she’d need to prove she was still ill.
The letter was actually addressed TO my cousin, AT the hospital address.
So again, I’m not sure what the writers axe was, but there seems to be a lot of vitriol for someone just making a case. Not to mention a total lack of verifiable proof of any of his assertions.
I’m not sure who wrote that
An anonymous, and therefore honest, psychiatrist, but more importantly someone whose body of work should be read in its entirety.
nor what their axe was to grind
My guess is that the psychiatric field has been co-opted by the government. Why? Because people would be outraged if politicians were picking and choosing who gets on the Federal dole for life, so they outsourced it.
It’s just NOT that easy.
The author says as much, “it’s not for you.” One must jump through the hoops two to three times, but for inner-city minorities, the process has been fully-automated for years.
Honestly, it’s all there in the article. Just read it.
“But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you at most $15,000 a year, and probably does not include health insurance, disability may be a better option.”
.
.
As someone who is on SSD, this statement is so much BS, I wish it had been said closer to my vegetable garden, I could use the extra fertilizer!
And it’s the type of statement that, combined with a SKIN color, would send all fair minded people, not to mention the NAACP and Liberals, insane! To ASS-U-ME that all, most or even a minor part of a percentage point over 50 % of SSD recipients can ONLY have minimum wage jobs is a GD insult to those of us ON SSD. And this is not the first idiot writer I’ve seen making such statements as of late.
.
The other kind of stupid sh1t statement I keep hearing is this next one.
.
.
“Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more health problems.”
.
.
The writer obviously doesn’t know anyone, nor has he talked to anyone who has fought their way through getting accepted into SSD.
A.) it takes a hell of a lot more than just the types of aches and pains and normal illnesses most people suffer as they get older.
B.) I’ve not seen anything that says there are a disproportionate number of older workers getting approved for SSD to even make his point valid.
.
Not that I set out to ‘find’ people on SSD or SSI, but I currently know five or six. Of that number, I don’t know ANY who were working for even hourly rates much less minimum wage. One owned his own business and had a few employees. I do know that of that five or six, two, besides myself, lost everything they owned while working through the SSA’s seemingly interminable system of appeals and approvals. Of the three of us two were forced into bankruptcy while the SSA dragged their bureaucratic feet. All of us made close to and two made over 6 figure salaries.
Last but not least let me say these two things.
If you do get accepted for SSD / SSI, the SSA will pay back payments for every month you ‘should’ have drawn a check, and there is a to MAXIMUM arears amount you can get. When I was approved, it was around $36K, so even though it took me 43 MONTHS to get approved, I only got the $36K. Try replacing your home, car(s), furniture, etc, etc, etc with JUST $36K!
I’ve seen several articles that say the ‘average time for approval’ is “X” months or days. But consider that while 80% of original applicants are turned down and have to go through appeals, that other 20% is approved on their original application, meaning their approval time by SSA thinking is ZERO days. Many of those 20% group of people, are so incapacitated by illness or accidents that they have to get someone to do the application for them. Also in that 20% are people who have diseases that must be aggressively treated through chemotherapy or through surgery. Many of whom won’t return to work due to the sudden onset of DEATH!
But rest assured, if you can walk and talk, it’s tough to get approved on the first go around.
I do know of a situation where a 36 y/o woman with non-crippling diabetes contracted a deadly case of staff infection, and her SSD was started then STOPPED after just 6 months, because her original diagnosis was that she would not live beyond 6 months.
I forgot this initially and I didn’t add her into my five or six above, but she was a loan officer with a large nationwide bank, making not quite 6 figures, so again hardly a minimum wage person, getting a better deal on SSD than she could have gotten working, as the writer attempted to portray such recipients.
So you aren’t one of the people he was speaking of who had a choice only between minimum wage jobs and disability? Suppose hypothetically you were. Why work for $2k more, if you can jump through those hoops you complained of (for much less work, I might add) and pull a steady check?
I think the most disturbing aspect is how fast it’s growing. There’s a graph titled “Applications for Disability Rise and Fall with the Unemployment Rate”. The most recent trough was in 1999 with roughly 0.9 applications for disability per 100 “eligible workers”. It was up to almost 2 applications per 100 eligible workers in 2009. I have no idea of the success rate of those applications, but if they’re all successful, that corresponds to an average stay in the work force of 50 years before disability. That seems a pretty high rate of disability and it might go up more in the following years.
Also, there are some states with a really high disability rate. West Virginia supposedly has 9% of its worker age population on disability. I’m probably committing a few sins of stereotyping, but I bet a lot, if not a majority of those people were facing the choice between minimum wage jobs and SSD.
self respect? Just saying..
Is that supposed to mean anything?
I’m with Leland, what is that supposed to mean?
“I’m with Leland, what is that supposed to mean?”
He’s answering the question above his reply. To wit:
“Why work for $2k more, if you can jump through those hoops you complained of (for much less work, I might add) and pull a steady check?”
It’s been the same in the UK since the mid-90s; the government discovered they could fiddle the unemployment figures by pushing the unemployables onto ‘disability’, so there are now millions of ‘disabled’ people who’ll never work again.
Indeed. And now they are correcting the mistake, in the normal bureaucratic way that creates more problems than it solves because there is no room for any sort of judgement about individual cases.
Sure it’s anecdotal, but my sister is a case in point. She has a very poorly-controlled case of epilepsy; her GP has to keep fiddling with her drug regimen to keep it barely under control, and despite that has two or three seizures of varying severity per week. She is on disability benefit – but because most of the time she looks normal she will probably lose it, unless by sheerest chance she has a fit during the interview.
Meanwhile, of course, the people who have really caused the UK’s economic problems continue to pull down six and seven-figure salaries and bonuses for shuffling electrons.
The Daily Telegraph reports what happens if you introduce medical tests:
The Labour Party sure bought a lot of votes with other people’s money.
Wow, that was more than a third of the total too. And well over 1% of the UK’s population in one shot.
Looking more at that story, it appears that about two-thirds of the people who had formerly been on sickness benefit (more than 2% of the UK’s entire population!) were taken off the sickness benefit and only about 10-15% were determined not to be able to work. The remainder received some benefits, but were determined to be able to work.
Every so often, there is speculation about what would happen if almost nobody could work (say because robots were so much better at any job than people were). I think we’re seeing a preview of that state (though driven by ridiculous obstacles to employing people rather than any natural competitiveness disadvantage). What happens is that the government hides the unemployed by putting them in schools, prisons, on the government payroll, and now via disability benefits.
I wonder just how healthy and productive the developed world could be, if it wasn’t spending so much effort creating and then hiding this unemployment problem.
If I might be so bold…
We’d be much closer to heaven on Earth if not for the socialist paradise.
I’m a firm believer in being re-checked. Even though I draw that check, I am STILL a tax payer and I don’t want my money spent on people who CAN work!
I agree with a slight modification. First, I don’t believe there is such a thing as not being able to work. Not being able to get or hold a job is a different thing.
Also, why does the govt. penalize people by reducing benefits when they try to improve their lives?
It’s perverse. There are solutions. The fair tax may be one example.
The Terrible, Awful Truth About Supplemental Security Income
Thales,
I’m not sure who wrote that, nor what their axe was to grind, so to speak. But I’ve known some people in dire straits who got turned down for SSI, and SSD. It’s just NOT that easy.
I have a cousin in NYC who has tried to work, but she has been Bipolar since she was 15 or 16. She has worked a few times over the years from time to time, but she can’t hang.
One of the problems with people who are Bipolar is that after some amount of time they think they’re OK now, and they stop taking their meds. Then, in a few weeks they spiral in and, in my cousins case, someone has to step in and take care of them, or have them committed.
A few years ago, while she was in the hospital after not taking her drugs as written, she was hospitalized. While she was IN the hospital, she was notified that she’d need to prove she was still ill.
The letter was actually addressed TO my cousin, AT the hospital address.
So again, I’m not sure what the writers axe was, but there seems to be a lot of vitriol for someone just making a case. Not to mention a total lack of verifiable proof of any of his assertions.
An anonymous, and therefore honest, psychiatrist, but more importantly someone whose body of work should be read in its entirety.
My guess is that the psychiatric field has been co-opted by the government. Why? Because people would be outraged if politicians were picking and choosing who gets on the Federal dole for life, so they outsourced it.
The author says as much, “it’s not for you.” One must jump through the hoops two to three times, but for inner-city minorities, the process has been fully-automated for years.
Honestly, it’s all there in the article. Just read it.
“But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you at most $15,000 a year, and probably does not include health insurance, disability may be a better option.”
.
.
As someone who is on SSD, this statement is so much BS, I wish it had been said closer to my vegetable garden, I could use the extra fertilizer!
And it’s the type of statement that, combined with a SKIN color, would send all fair minded people, not to mention the NAACP and Liberals, insane! To ASS-U-ME that all, most or even a minor part of a percentage point over 50 % of SSD recipients can ONLY have minimum wage jobs is a GD insult to those of us ON SSD. And this is not the first idiot writer I’ve seen making such statements as of late.
.
The other kind of stupid sh1t statement I keep hearing is this next one.
.
.
“Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more health problems.”
.
.
The writer obviously doesn’t know anyone, nor has he talked to anyone who has fought their way through getting accepted into SSD.
A.) it takes a hell of a lot more than just the types of aches and pains and normal illnesses most people suffer as they get older.
B.) I’ve not seen anything that says there are a disproportionate number of older workers getting approved for SSD to even make his point valid.
.
Not that I set out to ‘find’ people on SSD or SSI, but I currently know five or six. Of that number, I don’t know ANY who were working for even hourly rates much less minimum wage. One owned his own business and had a few employees. I do know that of that five or six, two, besides myself, lost everything they owned while working through the SSA’s seemingly interminable system of appeals and approvals. Of the three of us two were forced into bankruptcy while the SSA dragged their bureaucratic feet. All of us made close to and two made over 6 figure salaries.
Last but not least let me say these two things.
If you do get accepted for SSD / SSI, the SSA will pay back payments for every month you ‘should’ have drawn a check, and there is a to MAXIMUM arears amount you can get. When I was approved, it was around $36K, so even though it took me 43 MONTHS to get approved, I only got the $36K. Try replacing your home, car(s), furniture, etc, etc, etc with JUST $36K!
I’ve seen several articles that say the ‘average time for approval’ is “X” months or days. But consider that while 80% of original applicants are turned down and have to go through appeals, that other 20% is approved on their original application, meaning their approval time by SSA thinking is ZERO days. Many of those 20% group of people, are so incapacitated by illness or accidents that they have to get someone to do the application for them. Also in that 20% are people who have diseases that must be aggressively treated through chemotherapy or through surgery. Many of whom won’t return to work due to the sudden onset of DEATH!
But rest assured, if you can walk and talk, it’s tough to get approved on the first go around.
I do know of a situation where a 36 y/o woman with non-crippling diabetes contracted a deadly case of staff infection, and her SSD was started then STOPPED after just 6 months, because her original diagnosis was that she would not live beyond 6 months.
I forgot this initially and I didn’t add her into my five or six above, but she was a loan officer with a large nationwide bank, making not quite 6 figures, so again hardly a minimum wage person, getting a better deal on SSD than she could have gotten working, as the writer attempted to portray such recipients.
So you aren’t one of the people he was speaking of who had a choice only between minimum wage jobs and disability? Suppose hypothetically you were. Why work for $2k more, if you can jump through those hoops you complained of (for much less work, I might add) and pull a steady check?
I think the most disturbing aspect is how fast it’s growing. There’s a graph titled “Applications for Disability Rise and Fall with the Unemployment Rate”. The most recent trough was in 1999 with roughly 0.9 applications for disability per 100 “eligible workers”. It was up to almost 2 applications per 100 eligible workers in 2009. I have no idea of the success rate of those applications, but if they’re all successful, that corresponds to an average stay in the work force of 50 years before disability. That seems a pretty high rate of disability and it might go up more in the following years.
Also, there are some states with a really high disability rate. West Virginia supposedly has 9% of its worker age population on disability. I’m probably committing a few sins of stereotyping, but I bet a lot, if not a majority of those people were facing the choice between minimum wage jobs and SSD.
self respect? Just saying..
Is that supposed to mean anything?
I’m with Leland, what is that supposed to mean?
“I’m with Leland, what is that supposed to mean?”
He’s answering the question above his reply. To wit:
“Why work for $2k more, if you can jump through those hoops you complained of (for much less work, I might add) and pull a steady check?”
It’s been the same in the UK since the mid-90s; the government discovered they could fiddle the unemployment figures by pushing the unemployables onto ‘disability’, so there are now millions of ‘disabled’ people who’ll never work again.
Indeed. And now they are correcting the mistake, in the normal bureaucratic way that creates more problems than it solves because there is no room for any sort of judgement about individual cases.
Sure it’s anecdotal, but my sister is a case in point. She has a very poorly-controlled case of epilepsy; her GP has to keep fiddling with her drug regimen to keep it barely under control, and despite that has two or three seizures of varying severity per week. She is on disability benefit – but because most of the time she looks normal she will probably lose it, unless by sheerest chance she has a fit during the interview.
Meanwhile, of course, the people who have really caused the UK’s economic problems continue to pull down six and seven-figure salaries and bonuses for shuffling electrons.
The Daily Telegraph reports what happens if you introduce medical tests:
900,000 choose to come off sickness benefit ahead of tests
The Labour Party sure bought a lot of votes with other people’s money.
Wow, that was more than a third of the total too. And well over 1% of the UK’s population in one shot.
Looking more at that story, it appears that about two-thirds of the people who had formerly been on sickness benefit (more than 2% of the UK’s entire population!) were taken off the sickness benefit and only about 10-15% were determined not to be able to work. The remainder received some benefits, but were determined to be able to work.
Every so often, there is speculation about what would happen if almost nobody could work (say because robots were so much better at any job than people were). I think we’re seeing a preview of that state (though driven by ridiculous obstacles to employing people rather than any natural competitiveness disadvantage). What happens is that the government hides the unemployed by putting them in schools, prisons, on the government payroll, and now via disability benefits.
I wonder just how healthy and productive the developed world could be, if it wasn’t spending so much effort creating and then hiding this unemployment problem.
If I might be so bold…
We’d be much closer to heaven on Earth if not for the socialist paradise.
I’m a firm believer in being re-checked. Even though I draw that check, I am STILL a tax payer and I don’t want my money spent on people who CAN work!
I agree with a slight modification. First, I don’t believe there is such a thing as not being able to work. Not being able to get or hold a job is a different thing.
Also, why does the govt. penalize people by reducing benefits when they try to improve their lives?
It’s perverse. There are solutions. The fair tax may be one example.