I tell this to those who complain about the methodology of the FAFSA in determining what types of aid students/families are eligible for. Yes, they may KNOW of those playing the system (and wink wink nudge nudge of course we know it too and try so very hard not to get jaded and to keep in compliance with the law...but some playas are awfully good playas. We can't throw them out because we think they're playing...they have to meet the criteria of "fucked it all up on their own") but the rules are made, and changed, and made again...trying to serve the greater good. And anytime you do that you will find players. And anytime you do that there is someone who really DESERVES the aid but can't get it because of certain other rules. It's hard to watch sometimes, but keep in mind we MOSTLY see the students who ARE in trouble and ARE losing their eligibility and ARE trying to play the system. For each of them there are plenty more who use it to great self-benefit. It's a constant work in progress but efforts are made and implemented nearly every year to improve it, to drive out the players.
Unfortunately, as Dana also pointed out, too many judgment calls are made without really knowing that individual situation.
I know a guy who has an arm that doesn't even work. He hasn't been able to successfully get disability. Now, I am sure there is much more to the story than I know. I know a guy who seems pretty damn healthy to me who has been on disability for years. Now, I'm sure there is more to that story than I know.
I try to keep the mind open but it's awful easy to get jaded.
Especially since one of the bigger worries on my mind is that my depression will, finally and absolutely, render me incapable of holding a job. I do believe that we are once again heading into an optimistic situation and that change may still come. However, how much is the effed-upness of this current department and how much of it is just the progression of my (diagnosed) severe and chronic depression? I don't know. I really do not know. I like to believe that most of it is the pressure here, but as things go through my mind I wonder. Through therapy I am learning coping skills. But will those skills work if things just keep progressing?
Just my two cents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC
Don't know ow things work over there, but:
Over here there are a lot of myths about disability / incapacity benefits. There are, it is true, some people who are claiming despite the fact that they can and should work. But they are a wildly outweighed by the numbers of people who could and should be given benefits and who aren't. They are outnumbered by the people who are partially disabled from work and whose symptoms are erratic (this particularly applies to people with chronic illnesses/conditions and people with mental health problems).
Everybody always knows someone who is gaming the system. They stick out like a sore thumb when we cast our eyes around to see what is fair. But we just don't see the many, many people who are struggling along on their disability pittance for no other reason than that they cannot work, or cannot work all the time.
There is over here, a similar problem with the unemployment figures, and there were, for a while a lot of people who should have been classed as unemployed who had been somehow shunted onto disability benefits and therefore off the figures. But it was never as big a problem as we were told it was. Just as it isn't as big a probem as we are told it is now.
What i find far more troubling, personally, than the idea that a few people have managed to get out of working and wrongly claim disability, is the absolute fact that thousands upon thousands of people in my country have been removed from that system and refused those benefits on the grounds they are fit for work when they patently are not. The majority of claims for disability or incapacity benefit under this new system are initially refused and then accepted on appeal (costly for the tax payer and unnecessarily stressful for the client).
be careful what you wish for when scouring away the gamers. Theymay be the more visible but they are not the most prevalent. Their presence however offers impetus and context for a much colder society, in which we simply cease to help those that need it.
And maybe some people aren't totally unable to work. A the new tests assess, maybe they can stand upright for 10 minutes unaide,d maybe they can walk 100 yards, maybe on that day, for the person with MS or cancer, maybe that day they can clean their house from top to bottom. The fact that on three other days of that week they can't even drag themselves from bed notwithstanding, they are now 'Fit for Work'.
So much nicer, so much fairer, to them as well, we are told. Rather than consigning them to a life on the wasteheap, they'll be helped back intio a productive life. Except the help doesn't help (look up the Atos scandal in the UK), and the jobs aren't there anyway.
So all that happens is a bunch of people are thrown off that benefit and onto a job market in which 100 % fit and healthy 20 years olds are queueing 100+ to a job interview.
Careful what you wish for. It isn't just the guy with fake bad shoulder that pays the price. It's the young mum struggling with serious post natal depression and the cancer patient in brief remission, or the man who went blind with glaucoma two years earlier and is now scared of leaving his house. And the fifty-five year old whose rheumatoid arthritis comes and goes between ok and completely incapacitated. They're the ones who suffer in our quest for 'fairness'. And they outnumber and outweigh the fake bad back and the pretend depression.
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