The Financial Reality of Being on Disability

The reality of being on disability is awful in many ways. It's necessary for many sick people, but it's stressful and frustrating. They make you fight for your years to prove you're sick enough for disability, then they trap you into a life of poverty, harassment, and discrimination. The government does everything they can to make sure you're struggling in every way possible. I truly believe they hate the disabled. 

It took me two years to get my disability approved. I was instantly denied every time due to my young age and high level of education. It takes hours to fill out the paperwork and they didn't bother to read it. Just sent a denial letter and ask you to fill out the same paper work if you want to apply again. I can't even remember how many times in two years I sent in that same paperwork. I have severe arthritis and was not going to fill that out every time, so I scanned it, saved it, and would just print and resend. I ended up getting an attorney who put me in front of a judge, who finally approved it. Good news right? Kind of. I did get back pay for those two years and was able to get insurance.

Now the bad news. Medicaid is the insurance you get with disability and in the state of Florida it's garbage. Medicaid approved doctors seem to have barely graduated from medical school and have awful reviews online. This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't you want us to have the best doctors and access to treatments, so that we could have a chance at getting better and being able to work and function again? Now, to my point about the government hating us....give us horrible doctors, so that we don't get better, get sicker, and eventually die, so that we no longer need government assistance.

Going against popular belief, people on disability are extremely poor. We are not rolling in money and the government does not "hook us up". The government actually puts us in poverty and traps us there. Did you know that some people make as little as $550 a month on disability? I promise you this is true. The government actually says this is a livable amount, yet no one can seem to explain to me how this is actually possible. Housing, car, food, medical bills, etc. $550 doesn't begin to cover it. But wait, it gets better. They say oh, maybe $550 is a little low, so we will give you 274 dollars in SSI as well with Medicare insurance. So now they say it's possible to live off of $824 a month. Still completely cruel and unacceptable. Medicare insurance is much better if you get the supplemental insurance with it, which is covered when you get such a little amount each month. In the state of Florida, I could only work and make $89 a month before losing my SSI and Medicare insurance. If I go over that amount, even by a penny I not only lose it, but have to pay back that month. I lose my specialists and my good insurance coverage. So now I face a grueling choice. Try to work and make better money, but lose my good insurance, which will end up costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills or sit hopelessly and rack up debt.

When you're on disability in the state of Florida, you're not allowed to have more than $2000 in your bank account, or any assets over $2000. Again, they want to trap us in poverty. If you want to work while on disability, you can't make more than $1200 per month. Someone from the disability office will call you every year or two and waste an hour of your time on the phone confirming that you are still sick, poor and miserable and should continue to be on disability. They asked me if anyone has given me anything for my birthday, or Christmas. They will hold that against you if you say yes. Yup, you can and will lose your disability if anyone gives you money for any reason. These people are ruthless and try and find every way they can to get you off of disability.

The mental toll disability poverty takes is unbearable. I'm insanely stressed out and on edge every minute of every day about finances. I can't get caught up no matter what I do. I just keep racking up debt and it's horrible. One big factor in my diseases are stress, so this just makes things my worse. Especially with my anxiety.

If I could work I would. I owned a successful business. I loved what I did and worked towards that goal my whole life. I worked hard for my three college degrees. You don't work this hard to accomplish great things, just to sit and collect disability. I truly feel like because I'm on disability, the government is punishing me for being sick. They want us miserable and poor. This is how people control you. I didn't make myself sick and I don't deserve to be sick. I hate it. It's a huge inconvenience, it's miserable, it's embarrassing, and it's unbearable most of the time. I'm not asking to be rich. I'm just asking for a livable amount, so that I'm not drowning in debt.