Trump Administration's War On The Disabled
The Trump Administration's War On The Poor has been extremely successful.
His full-court press against poor children getting health care was a resounding victory (818,000 fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP).
His campaign against poor children eating enough food is still on-going, but there is little reason to believe that Trump won't successfully kick 688,000 people off of food stamps (and that's barely the beginning).
The Trump Administration has now set it's eye on SSDI and SSI.
The Trump administration is proposing changes to Social Security that could terminate disability payments to hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly older people and children.
...Social Security officials declined to comment.
Well, children don't vote and older people in Red States generally vote Republican even while they are being denied food and medicine by Republican policies. So this is a win-win.
Like the SNAP and Medicaid cuts, the Trump Administration is looking to change the rules.
Currently, beneficiaries are placed in three separate categories based on the severity of their disability: “Medical Improvement Not Expected,” “Medical Improvement Expected,” and “Medical Improvement Possible.” People with more severe medical conditions face less frequent disability reviews.The Trump administration’s proposed rule would another category called “Medical Improvement Likely,” which would subject beneficiaries to disability reviews every two years.
According to the Inquirer, “an estimated 4.4 million beneficiaries would be included in that designation, many of them children and so-called Step 5 recipients, an internal Social Security classification.”
Step 5 recipients, the Inquirer noted, “are typically 50 to 65 years of age, in poor health, without much education or many job skills [and] often suffer from maladies such as debilitating back pain, depression, a herniated disc, or schizophrenia.”
Jennifer Burdick, supervising attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, told the Inquirer that placing Step 5 recipients in the new “Medical Improvement Likely” category and subjecting them to reviews every two years would represent “a radical departure from past practice.”
Lawson of Social Security Works said “Donald Trump and his advisers know that this will kill people, and they do not care.”
Make no mistake - this is Social Security being cut.
And yet, retired people are going to overwhelmingly vote Republican next year.
Go figure.
Comments
Are there no prisons or workhouses though
This is cruel and unconscionable. Every time I think I couldn't hold GOP lawmakers in a lower estimation, they prove my expectations are too high. The GOP can fry in hell.
And sadly . . .
. . . they do this all in the name of jesus.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
The American Jesus
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "