My Encounter With A Right Wingnut

[SheilaT]

45. Yeah, it's amazingly complicated.

And if I understand it all correctly (what I learned working for the disability appeals attorney) is that your disability has to be such that you can't work at all in any field you can be reasonably qualified for. The bar is actually fairly high, and it was my observation that just about everyone my attorney represented constantly said, and clearly meant it, that they'd rather be working. For one thing, what you usually collect in disability payments is not all that much. It's simply not the golden chariot to an easy life that some people think.

Also, even very rational people often think irrationally about disability and mainly hear the siren song luring them to consider going that route. An example is a co-worker of mine who has various health issues that are quite real. But she, at least so far, can do her job and she does it well. More than once, when we're chatting about this and that, she'll comment that she absolutely cannot afford to take early retirement. She's about 53 or 55, I forget exactly. And then, in other conversations when she's talking about her health, she'll say she simply ought to retire on disability. I do try to point out to her that she's far better off continuing to work. And this woman is at least as outspoken a liberal as I am. But she does not fully get what retiring on disability really means.

Oh, and the other thing that makes getting disability fairly easy, is going blind. My younger brother had to retire on disability at age 50 when he lost his vision. But because he was relatively young, and was foregoing at least 10 to 15 years of paid employment, his actual check isn't all that big.