Feds Could "gut" Soc Security Disability Rolls

[katty]

cont'd: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050106SA.shtml

Feds Could "Gut" Social Security Disability Rolls
By Catherine Komp
The NewStandard

Friday 28 April 2006

The Social Security Administration has found a place to cut corners: several categories of disability-benefits recipients who the agency says can wait two more years to start collecting, no matter how much hardship the move might cause.
Advocates for low-income Americans and people with disabilities are calling on the federal government to drop a proposed change to Social Security that would force some people now qualifying for benefits to wait two more years before receiving aid.

They say the change is nothing more than an attempt to "slash the disability rolls" while increasing hardship for some of America's most vulnerable.

Critics also say the proposal would disproportionately affect people of color, especially blacks who experience higher rates of disability and have a harder time finding employment.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) rule-change proposal, published in the Federal Register last November, would make several different categories of people qualifying for disability benefits wait two more years for payments to start. Because Medicare and Medicaid eligibility are based on Social Security qualifications, individuals would have to postpone receipt of those healthcare benefits too.

[eShirl]

1. they're hoping enough people will die during the extra 2 year wait

so they will have the money to give Haliburton another no-bid contract for ... whatever they can make up

seriously, if this goes through people WILL die because of it

[WePurrsevere]

2. Stupid dastards just don't get it.. "There but by grace..." it could be

them or a loved one that needs this someday and they'll whine and cry that it's not then.

As someone who is disabled, is married to someone who is disabled from a work injury and knows many other disabled I have found the following to be very true. The fact is that most disabled I know would gladly work a regular full time job if they could and still have medical coverage.

<snip>
div class="excerpt"]But critics, including NOSSCR's Zelenske, want the proposal rescinded completely. She said waiting two more years for disability benefits could harm too many people.

"They've tried to work, often to their detriment ... and some people keep trying to work and make themselves sicker by doing that," Zelenske said. "But by the time they come in and apply for disability benefits, generally they have exhausted everything else that's out there."

[lins the liberal]

3. This is horrible!

from the article
Likewise, attorney Donald Bishop said some of the clients he has represented in rural North Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains have been employed since their teens in back-breaking work in the timber industry and masonry.

"Several of my clients have done such arduous work and have arthritic backs, only a seventh-grade or less education, and can barely stand mostly upright for six hours," wrote Bishop in his public comments to the SSA in response to its rule-change notice. "Persons like these hard workers are the most obvious persons to be harmed by this proposed rule change."

Don is currently representing my brother. Don is a good man and a good democrat. My brother has an inherited form of emphysema. He has never smoked in his life. He can no longer work and of course was initially turned down for SS disability. As it is now, Don said it would probably take at least another 15 months for him to get it.