Enemy of Entropy

YAY!

17 May 2009, 3:45 am. 1 Comment. Filed under Civil Rights, Health.

Cur­rent Mood:Esctatic emoticon Esctatic

We were fairly sure of this right after I finally had my Social Secu­rity hear­ing last month based on the very pos­i­tive state­ments from the judge, but I didn’t want to jinx any­thing. We got the offi­cial let­ter in the mail today, say­ing that the deci­sion was “fully favor­able!” SQUEE!

It will still take some time for that deci­sion to bounce around the bureau­cracy and get monthly pay­ments started, much less get the back pay from the SSA. Because the onset date was years ago, I should be eli­gi­ble for Medicare right away, but I’ll need to talk to the attor­ney about that on Monday.

I really needed some good news, so the tim­ing is marvelous.

This process has been an insane endurance con­test. The fact that the SSA has been absolutely obstruc­tion­ist through­out (and I know my expe­ri­ence is far from unique!) is ridicu­lous. The sys­tem demands that peo­ple who are most in need of help are least likely to get it in any timely fash­ion, because it takes so much per­sis­tence, jar­gon, and inside knowl­edge to get any­where. If you can do all those forms and gather all the records and so on by your­self, I don’t know that you should count as dis­abled! Even peo­ple with good sup­port in other ways don’t always have some­one will­ing, able, and per­sis­tent who can and will spend the hours and hours of time to push a claim through.

I started the fil­ing process for one rea­son: I needed sta­ble access to health­care so that I could get well enough to go back to work. Five years down the line, I’m not at all sure that I will be able to return to work, because my health has dete­ri­o­rated so much that it may not be pos­si­ble to get back to an “abled” state. How many years of pro­duc­tive lives are being in the U.S. wasted for lack access to healthcare?

I get annoyed every time I hear a talk­ing head refer to plans to “insure” every­one. That isn’t what we need! Plenty of peo­ple have health insur­ance and still don’t get the actual health care they need because they can’t afford the co-​​pays, or the insurer won’t cover a par­tic­u­lar drug or ther­apy, or there are pre-​​existing con­di­tion prob­lems, or…

We need health care. Not divided up by age (this for kids, that for seniors, some­thing else for work­ing age peo­ple, oh, right, the dis­abled here) by uni­ver­sal car, the same care for every­one, for the whole body, cra­dle to grave. (Who ever decided that eyes and teeth should be sep­a­rated out, any­way? That’s stupid.)

I read an art­cle about San Francisco’s health pro­gram last week – if I can find a link I’ll add it later. It does just what I described, from what that arti­cle says. I don’t know how much it costs to join, but appar­ently there’s a lot of out­reach to peo­ple who are oth­er­wise unin­sured. There are no pre-​​existing conditions.

Does any­one know of pro­grams like San Francisco’s else­where in the U.S.?

1 Comment »

  1. avatar Scott. 17 May 2009, 11:00 am

    Con­grat­u­la­tions!

 

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