So Social Security Disability is a secret welfare program now? Really???

I don't usually write two posts within 24 hours. But today I came across an article. An infuriating article. An article perpetuating stigma against people who live with mental illnesses, and disabled people at large - particularly those who are permanently disabled and live on Social Security Disability Benefits. This article, America's Hidden Welfare Program: Social Security's Disability Insurance is Expensive, Destructive, and Out of Control was written by James Ledbetter and published on Slate.com, a place where I wouldn't normally expect to find articles furthering discrimination of entire demographic groups. But there it was.

On Facebook, about 45 comments were written on the comments section of the link to the article, last time I checked earlier today, and 98% of those comments were people talking about how they are on disability, or they know people who are on disability, and they are disgusted with this insulting piece of writing. I want to say something about Social Security Disability benefits in case anyone reading this is not aware.

First, you can't get them unless you have records from doctors showing a definite permanent disability and a doctor who will state that you are permanently disabled. Even if you have that proof, 9 times out of 10, you'll be denied benefits when you apply. The application process is lengthy and more involved than getting a mortgage on a house. After you appeal, you'll often be denied again. Many people get a lawyer who takes on their case, because they don't know how else to fight the system for the methods of basic survival that they severely need. The lawyer, if they win the case, takes some of the back pay of benefits. Even with a lawyer, you may have to further appeal. I know one person who fought the system for five years, with a lawyer, until she finally got the benefits. And, incidentally, I think "benefits" when referring to this system makes it sound more like something being given to people for nothing, which is not what it is at all.

Once you're on SSDI (Social Security Disability Benefits), you really get to live in the lap of luxury. You get an income usually below $800 a month (a number based on the dozens of people I've known on disability). Mine is below $700 a month and it used to be much less.

This is so fun! You get to live far below the poverty line and everyone knows how much enjoyment a person can get from that! Also, you usually can't work at all, so you get to lose your feeling of fulfillment in life and your status as a member of the working class. This brings dicrimination by people who think you're worthless if you don't have a job, which is always fun to deal with! Yay! When someone asks you what you "do" for a living, you don't usually want to say "I am on disability", considering the ignorance of the general population regarding disability and considering there plethora of lovely articles like the one I'm describing in the media.

Also, in order to EVER get SSDI benefits, a person has to have worked and paid into the system, and the amount of benefits you get is based on how much you worked. I got sick at age 20. I didn't get to work much to pay into the system. But because the amount of my check is so low that it won't pay for my rent and food, much less all my other bills, I have no choice but to work. And I want to work. But I cannot work full time. I work part time and that is how I survive - SSDI and my part time job.

I don't talk to a lot of people about being on SSDI, because people who know nothing about it are apt to think what James Ledbetter things. All of us on disability are "milking" the system. In case you haven't followed this blog for a long time, I should mention a few things here. Before I applied for disability benefits, I had been sick and in so many emergency rooms and doctors offices that I had piled up thousands of dollars in medical bills that I could not pay. When I was without insurance and couldn't see a doctor for my physical illnesses or my psychiatric state (which was not yet correctly diagnosed), my life was a nightmare. Before I applied for disability benefits, I was homeless, living in a homeless shelter for several months and my car for a few weeks. I then went to live with a friend of a friend, and only at that point, after being debilitated by sickness, drowning in poverty, and having my life turn into a nightmare, only THEN did I even apply for disability benefits.

I applied, and I got the thousands of pages of medical records sent to Social Security, and I got the medical exam done by the SSA doctor, and I filled out all those forms, and I won. I did not have to appeal. But at least once, every 2-3 years, I have to reapply basically, updating all of my information and proving that I am still deserving of my $700 a month. Since I have to work part time, but can't work full time due to all my symptoms, I have to be careful that I don't make too much money at my part time job, because if you make over $900 a month, you get kicked off the SSDI program and lose your "benefits" (the money you need to survive) as well as Medicare, which provides the medical care THAT YOU NEED to be able to work part time.

If I was to try to go off disability right now, that would mean that I would have to find a full time job that I'm mentally and physically capable of doing, and that would pay me enough to be able to survive, and that would provide immediate health insurance from day 1, which would not exclude me for any pre-existing conditions whatsoever. That's not going to happen any time soon.

If Social Security determines for any reason that you are no longer eligible for "benefits", because you worked or because you don't seem sick enough anymore, you lose the benefits. And then, if you're disabled and can't work, it's too bad for you.

The Social Security Disability program didn't even EXIST until a few decades ago, and it is a wonder that a person with a disability could financially survive before this program existed. One way that they did so, if they had a psychiatric disability, was to live in a state hospital. In the 1980's when Ronald Reagan's administration closed many of those state hospitals (the deinstitutionalization period), many of those people became homeless, had no where to turn, and needed disability benefits. Which is what explains one of the claims made in Ledbetter's article - that more people are on disability now than ever before, for mental health reasons.

Ledbetter further claims that "everyone will have a mental illness at some point in their lives", which is obviously not true. Everyone may have mental or emotional crises such as situational depression in their lives, but the majority of people in this country do not suffer from a mental illness. Many do, but not most, and certainly not all. Only about 2% of us have Schizophrenia in any of its forms. So to diminish the severity of mental illnesses by claiming they are as common as a common cold is insulting and ridiculous.

I urge you to read this article for yourself. You can come to your own conclusions. If, like me, you find it outlandish, you may wish to write to the author, or to Slate.com, to tell them so. Or leave a message below the article, as many people have already.

Those of us who have a mental illness, or who care about a person who has such an illness, really do need to speak out, and speak out loudly when we hear such ignorance and misinformation as the claims in this article. We all know we don't want that tiny disability amount each month to go on a vacation to Tahiti and eat Bon Bon's and drink champagne. We need that money to SURVIVE.

And when someone says that people should not have what they need to survive from a government into which they have paid taxes, well that is a pretty dangerous thing to say. It makes me think of the Nazi regime, and how Adolf Hitler had many people with disability exterminated from the earth because they were thought to be worthless. We are not worthless, and we are not a bunch of welfare queens. We are people who need help to get by because of illnesses which are totally out of our control, illnesses we didn't ask for and we don't want to have. I wish that James Ledbetter could walk in my shoes for a few days.