Benefits are a lifeline for many (Day 46)

I met someone yesterday who was deeply depressed because her Long-Term Disability benefits (SSDI) had suddenly, erroneously, been cut off at the beginning of the year. As soon as she started speaking, I felt ill. Like so many people, I've had to deal with sudden changes to insurance benefits, and I've had to help family members navigate those bureaucracies. It can be an agonizing process, and wow, I hope people aren't trying to do that on their lunch hours, because the wait times can be forever. 

I've come to the conclusion that difficulties navigating a bureaucracy are a feature, not a bug. In other words, they know that after a certain point enough people are going to give up, and they want it that way, and that means they have fewer services--or guaranteed entitlements--to provide. That is a scam.

And it is deadly, especially when your inaction harms people who are already the most vulnerable. People who are on long-term disability depend on those benefits as their only source of income. Some are fortunate enough to live with family and friends who can provide for them, but many are not. Some of them are also dependent on that money to supplement other benefit programs, particularly the ones that make it possible for them to eat. Losing that money can be a matter of life and death.

The person I met could not stop crying for the first few minutes. She had been spending months trying to sort it out, and she hadn't been able to yet. Doing so required medical notes from her doctor to verify her condition--on a good day, those can be hard to get. Bureaucracies involve more bureaucracies, which is added impetus to forfeit.

Some people have said that sometimes you need to keep calling until you get a kind person who can 1) understand and 2) help you. Well, I agree with the first half: you need to keep calling, and that in itself is exhausting. But finding a kind person, actually, means nothing: the kindest person I spoke to when calling on behalf of a family member gave me incorrect information. She was very nice about it, but the net result was that she wasted as much of my time as the nastier ones.

I have sorted things out on my end, and I think, on balance, it is true that if you persist you can eventually do the same. I sincerely hope my new acquaintance can eventually sort her problems out. But persistence is hard when you have a condition that already qualified for long-term disability and you're thisclose to suicidal depression. 

It's one more symptom of a broken system, and one more reason we need systemic change.

Deb in the City