Disabled, or just desperate? Rural Americans turn to disability as jobs dry up

[n2doc]

Story by Terrence McCoy

BEAVERTON, ALA.

The lobby at the pain-management clinic had become crowded with patients, so relatives had gone outside to their trucks to wait, and here, too, sat Desmond Spencer, smoking a 9 a.m. cigarette and watching the door. He tried stretching out his right leg, knowing these waits can take hours, and winced. He couldn’t sit easily for long, not anymore, and so he took a sip of soda and again thought about what he should do.

He hadn’t had a full-time job in a year. He was skipping meals to save money. He wore jeans torn open in the front and back. His body didn’t work like it once had. He limped in the days, and in the nights, his hands would swell and go numb, a reminder of years spent hammering nails. His right shoulder felt like it was starting to go, too.

But did all of this pain mean he was disabled? Or was he just desperate?

He wouldn’t even turn 40 for a few more months.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-or-just-desperate/?utm_term=.2dc0c1936070

[Blanks]

1. It's Reagan's fault...

All of these small communities across the country used to have small family farms, small town banks, implement sales and all of the supporting jobs that go along with a community that has an 'export product'. The logging industry had the same kind of collapse too.

Nixon's agriculture policy was 'go big or go home' and they loaned money to farmers and made sure they borrowed more than they needed. Then we had big time inflation (Nixon even signed an EO forbidding everyone from raising prices) and Carter inherited this inflation, so he appointed Volcker to the FED and he raised interest rates. It brought inflation under control, but since Reagan didn't have any kind of plan to assist the small farmer with 18% interest on the loans that they'd been getting under Nixon's 'go big or go home' policy, so these small communities economies collapsed. All across the country.

It's why I keep saying that we need to reinvigorate these small communities as a matter of national security. We need to divert defense spending to getting these communities on a track to being more sustainable. If we have failing infrastructure in a couple of key locations across the country, these small towns don't have the local resources to survive for an extended period of time. They should be the supply line for the urban areas nearby on a lot of different levels, but they have been allowed to disintegrate for almost 40 years.

Of course, these small town folk could just move to a place where the jobs are, but I think it's in our nation's long term best interest to bring back these small town American communities economic health.

[haele]

2. I worked shipyards for a while. Physical Labor takes a toll on your body.

Especially if you work long hours and still have a commute to get home. Add in a "honey do" or the homestead maintenance chores that you're not going to hire out to someone else (because Grandy and Pa never did!), and you start feeling like you have a broken back by the time you're 40 - 45...
I suspect the majority of rural semi-skilled jobs tend to be heavy in the physical labor, and yes, your body is going to give out and you won't be as productive as you were when you were in your thirties...and you don't get hired anymore, because there's always some kid out there or there's a new robot the owner can buy that can do your job more efficiently. Add to that, there's only so many manager and lead positions out there...so if you've made a good living just being a jack carpenter, a mechanic, or a small factory worker, you're SOL.

And service workers don't have it any easier. Try keeping a job if you're constantly in low level pain and don't have the skills to get into a schmoozing management job where you can get occasional rest for your aching body.

So yeah, if you have few jobs in the area along with marginal health or health care options to begin with, so you can't "live healthy" or "live active" like your grandparents who had enough subsistence farming that they could can or preserve excess to cover out of season availability, who didn't have to worry so much about competition once they got their job, disability appears to be one of the last options to keep a roof over your head and food in the pantry once you're over fifty.

I would never begrudge anyone access to disability, especially if their job options are limited to non-existent where they have settled. Not everyone can just up and move to where the jobs are, especially since jobs now-a-days require skills, flexibility, the ability to network and frankly don't pay like they used to.

On edit - Social Security Disability was designed for people who cannot physically or mentally be qualified to work jobs that are available. It certainly doesn't pay enough to live high on the hog on - at most, if someone is cheating the system, it gives them enough money to pay for medical insurance.

And it does not help that the definition of "ability to work" may not be adequate for what some lucky or authoritarian people feel it should mean.

Haele

[Kittycow]

3. I don't get it.

I read the story and it seems to blame lack of jobs for people turning to SSDI. But it's hard to get disability unless you're actually disabled and even then it can be a fight to be approved. Are their applications just being rubber stamped through because they're in an economically depressed area? (One of the tenets, if you will, of SSDI is that you are unable to earn a living wage due to your physical condition. )

It seems that the real story would be that their disabilities were hastened by lack of health care.

[Daemonaquila]

5. Just the opposite.

It's harder than ever to get disability benefits. There are a lot of tall stories about people getting them without proof, etc., but that's the popular urban myth that a lot of people - especially people trying to get benefits when they probably could work - tell themselves so they have someone to blame for why THEY aren't getting benefits. This is one of the red flags when a person comes into my office with a SS claim. The more they complain about "those people" getting benefits, the more likely there's a problem with their own claim.

[Kittycow]

9. That's what puzzled me about the story.

It made it sound like if your body hurts and you can't find a job, you just high-tail it to the disability office to pick up a check .

I was fortunate enough to be approved for SSDI on my first try in 2006. It was a miracle to me.

I wish that the myth would die. I see it all the time in Internet forums.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. In my poor, red state, there's a whole network of doctors who will certify a disability

for a fee.
The mother of my son's child lives with a guy who has been on Social Security Disability since birth. He has a spinal problem, but is able to go ATVing, pushing them out of mud, etc. He supplements his income by pirating DVDs.
After the woman was in a car accident, she decided she was disabled due to back pain. Went to his doctors and low and behold, now has a handicapped parking sticker, a first floor apartment and is applying for permanent disability. However, she is able to sit at a bingo table for 8 hours at a time, drive, and carry in groceries. She is 27. I don't understand why she can't hold a job.

Arkansas has 8.4% of its population on SSDI, second to West Virginia.

[Daemonaquila]

4. The answer is both.

This is nothing new and nothing unique to rural America. I am a disability attorney in a rural area, and I deal with this phenomenon all the time.

First off, there are a ROYAL GOB TON of legitimately disabled people in rural America. Why? Because many have had poor or no access to health care, and have worked physically hard jobs for decades. People's bodies plain wear out. That process could have been staved off if they'd had decent medical care when they broke that foot... and then dislocated that knee... and blew out the discs in the low back trying to work that stocking job at night to help pay the bills for the hospital... and then got themselves into a hole with untreated diabetes and now are suffering from severe neuropathy and kidney disease... until they finally found a free clinic and tried to at least treat the diabetes and found out they've had Hep C for decades...

Believe it or not, that's a pretty normal client in their early 50s.

I also have turned away a ton of clients who are more avid than ever to try to get disability with iffy claims. Many of them, if you dig, are really unable to work because of external factors like a felony record that means no major employer in town will hire them. They can get a job with a smaller employer, for worse wages and no health care, probably with worse physical requirements that do give them more problems. These folks are legitimately sick, but they're not unable to work because of their medical issues.

Regarding the lack of jobs... no, there's no lack of jobs anywhere around this rural community despite popular claims to the contrary. There is a lack of GOOD jobs you can get without a degree, or without vocational training, and of course with a criminal record. Employers in this area can be choosy - there are a lot of people looking for work, or for better work, who have good skills and clean records. Contrary to a lot of myths about rural workers, there are plenty of smart, educated, experienced workers who are working at increasingly high-tech jobs, whether it's at the recycling company, the medical center, or the water or electrical company. The jobs that are drying up or at least unreliable for full time employment are, of course, agricultural, fast food, or construction. In the latter category, there is ALWAYS construction, maintenance, and ranch work available around here, aplenty, but not always with the same company or contract job, and in many cases it's extremely hard work and it is getting more high-tech by the year.

What we need to keep truly hurt or sick people out of destructive cycles and away from NEEDING disability benefits, around here, is to improve access to medical care. The worker who was running off on oil rig contracts at age 25, can't do it at age 40 if he's had a load of work injuries that have been insufficiently treated, and he's a racked-up mess.

But the long-term solution is education. I live in a state where only about 50% of the population completes high school. That is a tragedy. When you're a low-skilled, poorly educated dime-a-dozen employee in rural America, you WILL be left behind, and every injury, illness, brush with the law, etc. will put you further behind. Having poor skills will sink a person who lives in the city. In the country, it's many times worse.

We live in an area full of amazing artisans, farmers and ranchers, medical folks, truckers, specialty food producers, you name it. But ALL those things require education and training, not a GED and luck. Most of the people who are trying to get disability without sufficient reason fall into that group - younger, didn't take schooling seriously, didn't really plan their family or figure out what they'd do to pay their bills, and suddenly they have their first or second health crisis and their world is falling apart. I don't know if we can do anything for that generation, but we have to save the next.

[Kittycow]

6. Thank you for the in-depth explanation.

You shined a much brighter light on the situation than the linked story did.

[hollowdweller]

7. Good analysis. I worked for 30 years processing disability claims.

The typical client changed over time where I worked, but toward the end it was mainly people in 50's or early 60's who had chronic health problems. They had worked in jobs w/o medical benefits and then developed some sort of condition that required expensive medication or treatment so they filed for disability so they could get the medicaid.

Some of these people could probably have done some other job or even continued at their jobs but the cost of medicine made disability a better deal. A LOT who got it continued working because they liked working but found something they could do below SGA level.

Most of the people we allowed did not meet a listing and instead were allowed using he medical vocational tables. I think the GOP would like to kick the tables up 5 years to where you had to be 60 before transfer ability of skills was an issue rather than 55.

[n2doc]

8. Thanks for your thoughtful post! n/t