With Friends Like These ...

From the abstract for Disability Rights, Disability Discrimination, and Social Insurance by Mark Weber of the DePaul University College of Law, published in the Georgia State University Law Review:

This paper asks whether statutory social insurance programs, which provide contributory tax-based income support to people with disabilities, are compatible with the disability rights movement's ideas. Central to the movement that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act is the insight that physical or mental conditions do not disable; barriers created by the environment or by social attitudes keep persons with physical or mental differences from participating in society as equals. ...

But the civil rights approach to disability posits that disability is not a risk, not tragedy, and not a damage or defect. Instead it is a maladaptation of society to human variation. ...

This paper argues that a justification remains for social insurance under the civil rights approach to disability, and further suggests that expansion of social insurance for disability is both compatible with disability rights principles and supported by wise public policy.

Note that Professor Weber is arguing against the nutty position that there is no one who is unable to work due to illness, that in every case the supposed inability to work is due to discrimination.