In my opinion, this student offers a convincing personal testimony about the value of SSI, Medicaid, and SNAP as programs that help persons with disabilities enjoy a better standard of living. These programs prevent the sort of desperate poverty and malnutrition we don't want in our society.
Since I became disabled at the age of sixteen I have received a lot of government assistance, which has helped me survive and get by. The first assistance I can remember receiving was Supplemental Security Income when I turned eighteen. The Supplemental Security Income program was established during the Nixon Administration. It was essentially a restructuring of the Social Security Act’s public assistance programs for blind and older Americans. The program assists poor people aged 65 or older as well as blind people and people with disabilities. People with disabilities, like myself, are the largest group in Supplemental Security Income clients. “Disability” is defined under the Supplemental Security Income guidelines as a “physical or mental impairment that prevents substantial employment activity and has lasted or probably will last for a least a year or may result in death. As I stated before I started receiving Supplemental Security Disability when I was eighteen and I am still receiving it today at the age of twenty-three. I am grateful to be able to have this income because it has helped me be able to support myself while being a full-time student and has also helped be able to provide for my son over the last two years. Although for me it is not an ideal income to survive on forever, it has been an amazing benefit to have over the last seven years of my life since I have been unable to work.
[Back in the 1990s when I was a graduate student the Social Security Administration published an interesting report authored by Sata Kochhar and Charles G. Scott describing all the different sorts of disabilities among SSI recipients the prevalence of various conditions. That report is still available online. For the most recent data (which is not at all detailed like that 1995 report was, you can go to the Statistical Yearbook from Social Security, and see that (in December of 2016) 5.8 million SSI recipients were disabled, 1.2 of these were both blind and disabled, and only 1.2 million were elderly.]
One thing I have been blessed with my entire life is private insurance from my mom. It has been a blessing to never have to worry about going to the doctor or getting my medicine. Before having Medicaid, having private insurance was a huge benefit to me and my family. I was life lighted to a hospital when I had my car accident and my private insurance covered every penny of my twenty plus thousand-dollar helicopter ride. I am explaining the ways that private insurance has benefited me because I also want to explain how it has hindered me in ways since becoming disabled. The situation I am going to use is when I was still doing physical therapy and my private insurance was basically slowly trying to kick me out of physical therapy all together. They began limiting my monthly visits and time to an amount that made it almost pointless to go anymore. At that point my physical therapist and doctor began trying to get my private insurance to cover a ‘sit to stand’ machine that I could have at home since I was not going to be able to use one at therapy for very much longer. The sit to stand was a machine that I could transfer into that would lock my knees into place and let me slowly pump the machine up to a standing position. It was a great way for me to stretch my legs, bare weight on my legs and let my insides breath from a normal body position. This sit to stand machine would provide multiple benefits for my body.
I went through a couple different companies applying for a sit to stand machine in hopes of getting approved for it. But it wasn’t until I received Medicaid that I finally was approved for the sit to stand. After being denied multiple times by private insurance, I was approved on the first try with Medicaid, and I could not have been happier. Because of Medicaid I was able to continue my therapy from home and not have to worry about getting the proper exercise I needed. Today even when my private insurance won't cover all or part of a bill, Medicaid almost always covers the costs. Medicaid is a major health program and helps millions of people like myself. To explain Medicaid more, it is a federal grant to states that helps finance health care for the poor. Federal regulations specify the basic health services that must be offered under Medicaid. Yet, services are primarily administered by individual states including decisions regarding the duration of services and optional services. Medicaid is a “vendor system” which means payments are made directly to the service and provider. Many recipients of Medicaid are families with Temporary Assist to Needy Families (TANF). However, the most Medicaid dollars go to people who are blind or have other disabilities. Furthermore, most Medicaid spending on older Americans is for nursing home care.
Another program that has been a big help in my life since becoming disabled is food stamps. The Food Stamp Program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) was designed to help end hunger and improve nutrition and health. It helps low-income households buy the food they need for a nutritionally adequate diet. The Illinois Department of Human Services administers the program in our state, but at the federal level the program is administered by the Department of Agriculture. Food stamp benefits can be used to buy any food or food product for human consumption, plus seeds and plants for use in home gardens to produce food. Benefits are provided through The Illinois Link System, an electronic system that allows someone to use a plastic card, like a bank card, at grocery store check-outs. Most households with low income can get food stamp benefits. I started receiving food stamps when I moved out of my mom’s house at the age of nineteen. When I first moved out I moved into an income-based apartment complex by myself, so I only received around $65 when I lived there. After I moved out of my apartment and into a house I was renting for quite a bit more money, they increased my monthly amount to around $195, which was awesome. I was always able to keep my house stocked with food throughout the entire month. Once I had my son, my monthly amount increased to around $320 and it has been an absolute blessing for my son and me. My son has been blessed to be able to have all the food he has ever needed in his two years. Without the help of my food stamps, I would not have been able to keep food in my refrigerator and cabinets a lot of the time.
I know one of the articles I came across had some older information, but the key points of these programs were still clear. In my opinion, although some of these programs may be flawed in certain ways, they are none the less beneficial to those truly in need. Without federal and state programs like I mentioned, among many other assistance programs, people like myself would not be able to survive or provide for themselves and/or their families.
References
Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare. (2017, October 30). Retrieved February 24,
2018, from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/current-issues-and-programs-in-social-welfare/
Illinois Food Stamp Program. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2018, from
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