Tom Upton, author of Just Plain Weird, spoke out Saturday on what he calls "the deepening apathy of the general public toward persons with disabilities."
"Disabled people seem to be slipping lower and lower on the food chain," said Upton, himself legally disabled. "People who are forced to go on disability face a scary future. The system that has been set up, and into which workers have paid for years, clearly doesn't work. The average waiting time to get approved for SSI or SSDI has been running about eighteen months, but in some cases applicants have had to wait as long as five years or more before finally getting approved. A family whose head of household becomes disabled can be devastated by such delays. To make matters worse, the SSA has been employing every method possible to reduce the awards for family benefits; in some cases, children who ought to be receiving, say, three hundred dollars a month, end up being award only a percentage of that. Some children have been awarded as little as nine dollars a month. So even after approval, there is no longer a guarantee that you and your family will received what you paid for over the years. Of course, you can appeal any award, but then you enter yet another process that can take months and months of more waiting."
When asked what the solution is for this problem, Upton responding, "I'm not even certain there is a solution. The situation has been deteriorating over the years. Once you become disabled you become part of a minority that has a very small voice. The general public doesn't take much of an interest in disability issues. I think the reason is that people believe that becoming disabled is always something that happens to somebody else. The interest just isn't there, and without the involvement of the general public, it is impossible to insure that these conditions will ever improve; there will never be enough pressure on the federal government to address and fix these problems.
"The funny thing is," Upton continued, "people do everything else to guarantee their financial health in the future. They buy life insurance. They set up retirement accounts. They create college funds for their children. Yet nobody bothers to check and make sure disability benefits will be there if and when they need it. This is a critical oversight, I think, and it doesn't even cost anything; all you have to do is take an interest, get involved. If you see that applicants now are waiting too long for approval, if you see that awards aren't what that ought to be according the SSA rules-- well, you can be assured that it can be only worse if in the future you yourself are forced to go on disability. The safety net has lost its safety; now it is only a net."
