The American Disability System is failing its people.

I have a recent report of a single mother who became disabled after having

daily headaches and migrains for over 4 years.

She and her son both have autism spectrum disorder and the doctors suspect her autism is causing the headaches and migraines. She resigned from her job because of this. Previously working in an office, being over sensitive to loud noice and bright lights, she was having constant headaches.

She saught treatment for a year prior to applying for disability and attempted to find a new job. Unable to control the headaches with medications and unable to find work that wouldn’t set off a slew of migraines, she applied to disabilty. She has been waiting over a year after her application date for even a medical consulation. She was approved for prescreening and her cased was sent to medical a year ago. She still is awaiting her evalution as her 4 years of headaches and autism disagnosis are not documentation enough. She also has suffered from other chronic pain conditions, but has since treated those and asked us to leave them out of this story.

Although she remains annoyomous, her story is so familar as confirmed by a call to the disabilty office for information.

One case worker admitted, “people are losing their homes waiting for even a consult. The waitlist in my office alone is over 2 years. I have people calling everyday begging to finish their paperwork.”

Other offices have reported the same. Case workers are outsourcing to other districts and the system is overrun with cases pending.

People are losing their homes, filing bankruptcy, and starving waiting for a simple visit from a doctor. Most people have already submited proof of disabilty from their own doctors. However, for some reason

the government says that isn’t proof enough

and want to do an evalutation of their own. Yet they do not have the means to actually provide such evalutations.

This is just one case of many. Everyone is saying the same thing. And when you do recieve an evaluation, you often get rejected for a reason not related to your medical condition.

One rejection stated:

applicant having worked in the past.

Note: This one especially bothers me as you can’t have disability of the type applied for if you have not worked. So it makes absolutely no sense at all how the rejection was filed.

Another similar rejection was that the applicant was too communicative and they ommited the function test.

Both cases are still pending contest and have not even been assigned to a judge yet.

There are hundreds and thousands more stories just like these wrongly being rejected, transfered, delayed, or simply ignored for months and years.

Our system has broken. We cannot sustain our disabled population and no one can afford to go years without income waiting on disabilty. The homeless population will only increase as people lose their homes waiting for help.