by Olivia LaRosa
This sound bite about the disabled is disgraceful and embarrassing. Dr. Paul, you are making up stories about disabled people.
Rand Paul, is it because you want to divide Social Security recipients by demonizing Americans living with disabilities so you can put another dollar in your pocket each month? Here's your lame claim. “You know, over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts. Join the club.”
Mr. Paul, you are a physician. I am sure that you have seen people with rheumatoid arthritis, degenerated hips, lumbar stenosis, ankylosing spondilitis, degenerative disc disease, and other terrible musculo-conditions that cause suffering 24 hours a day. You imply that back pain is a trifling condition. It isn’t like you say and you should know that.
Politifact grades your comments with an F for FALSE.
Glenn Kessler, the fact checker at the Washington Post, gives you 3 Pinocchios for wildly inaccurate stats. I mean, your numbers aren’t even close to being true. That’s a sign of sloppy thinking.
Do we really want someone as lazy as you to be our President? Do we really want someone as mean as you as our President?
The following is intensely personal, but at the same time a template of the "disability establishment" that destroys disabled people's lives. Claims that some people abuse the system are without merit. People abuse all systems. All this means is that we need to fund our disability caseworkers so that cheats can be caught early.
On the average, people who are granted SSDI and SSI die within 5 years. These benefits to not constitute a vacation for us. People wait years, lose all their friends, go through all of their savings. Some don’t make it. They die or commit suicide.
It is incredibly difficult to get approved for Social Security Disability Insurance. Take me, say. I was a passenger in a car hit head by an old heavy Chevy Van in 1982. I was not allowed to return to work until 6 months after the accident. I have had six surgeries on my legs since then.
Fast-forward to 2007. I had no health insurance and no money to pay for medical expenses. My back was constantly seizing up. My legs failed me often. I bought a motorized scooter so I could run errands.
Fast forward to 2011. So many nights, I would be sitting at my desk, when I would notice the pain creeping up from my legs and eventually gripping my entire body. I could not think. If I ventured out of the house, I would be in severe pain for the next two days. My hips ached and pain shot from them down my legs.
I was found disabled by the Social Security Admin. I began to receive SSI payments. My disabilities are severe and persistent. No one questions why I don’t have a job when they hear what’s wrong with me.
By October of 2013, I was in so much pain that I could not sit in any chair. I was confined to my bed for six months, in agony. People refused to believe my descriptions of my symptoms, because they varied. The one consistent sign about my condition was the 8-10 level pain in my entire lower body.
In April of 2014, I finally got an MRI promised to me in December. I had a condition I had never heard of. Lumber stenosis with severe neurogenic claudication. That is Latin for “This thing hurts like a son of a gun.”
Stenosis conditions are managed by steroid shots and a complicated list of pharmaceuticals that keep the pain down for a while. I also have moderate cervical spine stenosis.
This condition squeezes and puts pressure on the spinal cord. The squeeze is on several different places. The symptoms can vary for that reason.
I have reached the limit on steroid shots for a year. I have to work from my bed. I can’t let my tax clients down.
I am too fragile to move myself to another residence. I rarely leave my home. I also suffer from degenerative arthritis in my hips. I cannot walk further than one block from my house.
My SSDI disability claim has been languishing in the appeal process for 4 years now.
The reason my case is in appeal status is that I made my claim more than two years after the last date I was employed by someone else. Modest earnings from self-employment income that I paid taxes on do not count.
I have it soooo easy. Wanna change places?
So many people who are disabled are excluded from SSDI benefits because of the 2-year rule. It should be repealed. Illnesses don’t suddenly appear conveniently before that 2-year deadline. Some injuries take decades to disable us, like mine did. I worked as long as I could. You really wouldn’t rather I die, would you?
NB. About the 6 ways: I did not count how many ways it conflicted. I do know that people open emails that have numbers in the heading, so there ya go.