Earlene had a bachelor’s degree. She did white collar office work all her life. At 50, she suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed----on her left side. She was confined to a wheelchair and needed assistance to go to the bathroom or cut her food or bathe herself. She was in and out of the hospital with infections. When sitting up in her wheelchair, her blood pressure would become dangerously low. But, because she could still speak and use her right hand---her typing hand---the Social Security Administration decided that she was healthy enough to work. She died without ever collecting a penny of the SSI she had paid into all her life. She died without ever qualifying for Medicare.

It has gotten to be a joke. A sick joke, like a Gaham Wilson cartoon.



No matter how sick you are, your first request for Social Security disability will be denied. Then, you get a lawyer to appeal, and after a lot of delays, the court decides that you were disabled all along, and you get a backdated settlement---that you have to share with your lawyer. I guess it’s some kind of professional courtesy, the lawyers in the federal government looking out for their colleagues in private practice. Too bad no one is looking out for the folks too sick to work who have no money for rent, no money for food, no money for health care.

A lot can happen in the No Man’s Land between a disability denial and a successful appeal. A schizophrenic can run out money for medication and end up in jail for doing what the voices in his head told him to do. The second heart attack can kill off the myocardium that survived the first heart attack. Spinal stenosis can damage the nerves in your leg permanently. Uncontrolled blood pressure can cause a stroke. Untreated sleep apnea can cause a car wreck that leads to a skull fracture that causes a permanent vegetative state. If a court determines that you really were disabled after all, they will write you a check for a few months SSI payments. But who pays if you die while waiting for justice? And once you are declared officially medically disabled, who pays if you die from treatable medical problems while waiting two years for Medicare? Not the federal government. You pay. Your family pays. Medicare saves money and so does Social Security----

Just how many flaming hoops can a woman in a wheelchair jump through and come out the other side alive? How many land mines can she avoid as she wheels her way through No Man’s Land, dragging a catheter bag and portable oxygen?