May 5, 2013

Dilsability Recipients Fight Stigma

     From the Montgomery (AL) Advertiser:
When he looks in the mirror each morning, the man staring back at Steven Ladner looks healthy. There are no outward signs of disability, certainly nothing that would prevent the 42-year-old from heading off to a full-time job and normal life.But underneath the skin, it’s a different story. Ladner suffers from debilitating migraines and diabetes. The diabetes has caused neuropathy, resulting in his consistently losing feeling in his hands and feet. A brain scan a few years ago turned up a benign tumor. ...
Because of these problems, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has deemed Ladner to be disabled. This month he will begin receiving a check for about $1,300 per month, and his health care will be provided by the federal government through Medicaid.

He is not alone.

Over the past three decades, the number of people on disability across the nation, and especially in Alabama, has skyrocketed. Some counties in this state have more than 20 percent of their working-age citizens drawing disability payments. ...
Those high numbers, along with sometimes tall tales of scams and fraud — and a number of misconceptions and misinformation, some perpetuated by those NPR stories — have left recipients like Ladner and the workers who service the disability programs battling an increasingly bad perception.“I do know how people think of folks on disability, and it’s not good,” Ladner said. “I know some people look at me and think, ‘Why ain’t he at work? He looks fine to me.’ I’d probably think the same thing, because there are some people I know who shouldn’t be on it. It does affect you. But for someone like me, who really needs it, it’s really a blessing.” ...
For Ladner, it took nearly two years before he was approved for payments. And then came a five-month waiting period between that approval and receiving his first payment.“It really put me in a tough spot financially,” Ladner said. “We burned through our savings and cut back as much as possible. It put such a strain on us — this whole process — that me and my wife are separated right now. It’s just a really tough thing to go through.”

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a beneficiary. Actually i made a few comments on a previously ended aticle. Point one,it takes a thoughtful or considerate dds examiner and or alj to deliver a fair and just decision and some beneficiaries with legitimate difficulties may not seem sick(lack of a better word).

Point two,the only fair way of reducing the rolls is to subsidize employers to hire people with disabilities because the subject of work is complex and would be to hard for a person with real difficulties.

Anonymous said...

First, there are many claimants who outwardly look fine, but are disabled within the meaning of the Social Security Act. Indeed, most disability claimants outwardly look fine.

Second, the majority of claimants, including those found to be "not disabled," are not fraudsters. While they may not be "disabled," they are people with significant medical or emotional illnesses, which although limiting, simply are not totally disabling. Indeed, denying claims can be emotionally hard because most of the claimants are quite sympathetic.

That being said many of the "tall tales of scams and fraud" mentioned in the article are not "tall tales" at all, but are quite real.

Mr. Ladner's story underscores the need for ALJs to fully read their files (medical and non-medical) and conduct thorough hearings, so that the credibility of the claimant's subjective complaints can be fairly and accurately weighed. To do so, however, requires time and the Agency does not like ALJs to take time.

When an ALJ wrongfully denies benefits to a claimant because they did not fully know the file is an injustice. However, when an ALJ grants benefits to a claimant who is actually a fraudster, lazy, or perhaps someone who is quite sincere and sympathetic, but does not meet the criteria to be found "disabled," they further injure the truly disabled because it wrongfully adds to the misconception that disability claimants are lazy or fraudsters.

Anonymous said...

This quote says it all:

"I’d probably think the same thing, because there are some people I know who shouldn’t be on it."

Anonymous said...

He might have had a five month waiting period in which he was not paid, but I question whether he waited five months after approval to get a check, not if he waited two years and presumably went through the hearings process. I am sure his attorney would have prevented payments being delayed that long.

Anonymous said...

I've had clients sitting in my office disparaging other claimants because everyone knows someone out there who gets benefits but doesn't deserve them. Most recently, I told my client, a heart patient, that he shouldn't talk like that, because unless you hear him gasping for breath after walking across the room, you'd think nothing was wrong with him. I also told a client who had cirrhosis from alcoholism that he ought not to talk like that because there are lots of people out there who would think a former alcoholic who made himself disabled is not deserving. It always strikes me as the height of irony and arrogance when deserving claimants believe they're more deserving than some other person.

Anonymous said...

Most of the people I run across who are truly never going to be eligible for benefits believe they are simply because they cannot do their old jobs. There are duration problems, such as the people recovering from car accidents who believe they ought to be able to draw short term disability. Or, they're under age 50 with a problem that would prevent them from doing their old jobs but they cannot imagine switching to a lighter type of job (i.e., a truck driver who now is told they can become a bench assembler, document preparer or price marker). Or, the person has been told over and over again that the medical condition prevents them from working at the jobs they are applying for. Why shouldn't these folks consider themselves disabled? It's not like they should automatically understand what disability for SS purposes means.

Anonymous said...

@ 10:06

good point. I ran into this just the other day while listening to a hearing recording. A claimant who was less than forthcoming with reporting his self-employment income and paying federal income taxes got very upset during the hearing (he was told repeatedly that he simply wasn't insured for DIB on or after his AOD [multiple apps were kicked out because he and his wife have significant assets and she works]). He kept saying that he paid in and it was time to dip into that pot.

I am always reminded of my few years living in western Europe when encountering situations like this. In western Europe, it seems that most of each country's citizenry is knowledgable about the country's social programs--where and how to get benefits or access, the requirements for each program, etc.

Here, I would wager aside from SSA employees and others who work with SSA on a daily basis, it's a single-digit percentage of Americans who know even some of the basics of what is our biggest social safety net.