SSI and Disability: No health insurance

While the SSI and Disability option is horrendous from paperwork to wait-time, which could take months, I expect that disability claims will rise and rise again in the next few years. Chronic conditions, including mental conditions can qualify some workers for disability.

If you are disabled, the monies from disability go to your support. Based on credits earned as a pay-into-the system worker, individuals become eligible for a small stipend when disabled. After diagnosis, periodically, individuals are re-assessed as to status. But there is no health insurance coverage. That means that many on disability stipend incomes cannot afford to treat their illness without simultaneously applying for Medicaid or going to an emergency room.

The stupidity of the system also means that disability status might be threatened if an individual doesn't continue to seek medical help for his/her disabling condition.

Time for the psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists....The stress of illness causes acute mental reactions from depression to anxiety and worse. It's time for our health care deniers to understand their contribution to the situation. It is my hope that health insurance companies are sued each and every time they exacerbate medical conditions through the deliberate infliction of emotional harm that they knew or should have known would have resulted from their conduct. This is a negligence standard and in instances I have seen already, also rises to flagrant disregard for the well-being of the insured.

The second point is that Disability Insurance is available for those with chronic mental conditions. Further, in our current "health services" environment, the documentation of all these "conditions" will preclude the likelihood that individuals will be able to re-enter the non-governmental health insurance market because the expense of insuring anyone who is less than perfect is worsening rather than improving.

The final point is that any health services (the word care is an affront in this day and age)reform MUST be systemic. A piecemeal approach invites loopholes for exclusion. Penalizing people for illness is barbaric. Excusing this basic fact by blaming individuals for human faults (alcoholism, substance abuse and the complications thereof), for human frailties (such as aging, or suffering from depression), or for human emotions such as fear which have led doctors afraid of malpractice claims and insureds afraid of getting sick to over-utilize medical testing, is also barbaric. A health services system that commits to providing affordable, accessible, quality health care to all individuals without regard to predisposition or financial ability must remain the goal of a civilized society and every step taken should always be measured against this goal.