In the twelve-month stretch from October 2022 through September 2023, 30,000 people died while waiting for federal disability determinations, according to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. Martha asked Harris what she would do as president for people, like herself, who are waiting for disability decisions while in desperate need of health insurance.
Delays in those decisions, driven in part by understaffing and a Covid-related rise in disability rates, have driven the typical wait time from four months in 2019 to seven months today, often coupled with the need to appeal an initial rejection, which can take years. The processing times represent a mounting crisis for the more than 1 million Americans who apply for disability in a given year.
UK is fucked, too. During/post COVID the Tories were doing messed up shit like setting up appointments for disabled people recieving benefits to prove they were disabled and still needed benefits. They would purposefully set the approval appointments somewhere physically difficult to access for a disabled person. If you showed up, you obviously weren’t disabled, because you managed to arrive despite obstacles, and you would be denied benefits. If you failed to show up, you were also denied benefits. It was built to just kick people off the fucking system en masse.
Which isn’t even as bad as that they tried to argue during the height of COVID that it was a waste of resources to save the lives of the developmentally disabled. Essentially, they just wanted to pull the plug on those people and give the ventilators to more “suitable” candidates. Fucking sickening.
That disheveled asshole you had in charge wouldn’t be capable of caring if his life depended on it.
The preponderance of shitty world leaders (over the last 40 years or so) is fucking depressing. :/