Social Security disability-benefit recipients are the
latest targets in the government's attempt to save
money.
It takes up to 15 months to receive approval for
benefits if someone becomes disabled before retirement.
During that time, a person cannot work and must be
unable to obtain work. If workers' compensation or
employer-based benefits have run out, too bad. The only
choice is to wait and hope for the best.
Social Security has proposed to add two years to the
waiting period for benefits. In addition, tighter
restrictions on what qualifies as a disability are also
in the proposal. Don't think Medicaid will step in.
Medicaid eligibility is based on Social Security
qualifications, which means individuals would have to
postpone receipt of health care benefits, too.
This is a disastrous proposal, in which money
overrides the health and care of Americans who have
worked and paid into a system all of their lives. The
hardest hit will be people in the low-income brackets
who have less than a high school education. People of
color in rural communities will suffer most. Big
surprise, eh?
According to the Federal Register, the Social
Security Administration wants to raise the age limit for
its category of "younger individual" from 50
to 52, meaning that most people below that age are
considered to have the ability to adjust to other work,
despite the onset of a work-related disability. The
proposal would also increase by two years the
eligibility age for individuals who are considered
illiterate or unable to communicate in English, from 45
to 47.
This administration has maintained the bull's-eye on
the poor and undereducated for decades. Never mind that
the jobs this target group has done over the last
century were brutal and filled with long hours,
dangerous environments and years of back-breaking work,
mostly in the lumbering and masonry professions.
Never mind that retraining them in a new profession
would mean going back to school for a GED and hoping
that someone will hire an aging, injured individual who
can't stand for more than four to six hours at a time.
Never mind that the job market for the undereducated is
slim and shrinking daily. Most jobs that don't require a
high school education are physical labor jobs that are
taken by kids who have dropped out of high school or are
in college.
This proposal ignores the hardship it will cause on
those who have followed the rules of the American dream.
Waiting nearly three years to receive the benefits from
a system that a worker has paid into for nearly 30 years
is inexcusable.
Cutting benefits is the cure-all for the poor
financial practices of the federal government. There are
many other overfunded programs that should be tapped to
keep Social Security intact.
It's time to vote out those in Congress who support
such money-saving tactics.
McKee, a wheelchair user, is a freelance writer
and producer. You can e-mail her at chairgrrl@chairgrrl.com.
