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.
The entire disability system in the USA is built to hurt people, top to bottom. It forces people to live in perpetual poverty and often struggle to afford the help they need for their disabilities. They can’t get married without their benefits being cut, because now they have family who is expected to care for them.
This is just another symptom of a system designed to prevent as many people from collecting benefits as possible. If someone dies while waiting, that’s no money that needs to be paid out. It’s a “win” in terms of the budget, because it’s reducing costs by denying benefits.
The USA is truly run by fucking vultures, and while the Republican party is responsible for most of the horrific messes, there are a not-insignificant number of congresspeople who are “Democrats” but may as well be Republican, like Joe Manchin.
It really pisses me off that we treat people like this. I wish this country actually believed everyone is entitled to dignity and worked to provide it along with a basic standard of living. We easily could. But we don’t because billionaires need their tax cuts and corporations need their handouts.
Dignity isn’t profitable, that’s the basic problem.
The Republican Party project is to make sure things get worse, and the ‘Responsible Moderate Democrats’ make sure things don’t get better.
IIRC, Manchin previously announced that he isn’t going to run again.
If he weren’t fairly close to Republican positions, he probably wouldn’t even be in office now; during the time that he was in politics, West Virginia shifted from being a very blue state to being a very red state. I’d argue that that’s mostly a function of party realignment than changes inside West Virginia, but it doesn’t matter much from the standpoint of a politician’s electoral viability, as the brand still has an impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Manchin
Hmm. Apparently – hadn’t heard of this until reading this – he’s also no longer a Democrat, re-registered as an independent. The brand probably became too much of a political liability.
EDIT: And it’s not just that all West Virginia’s federal representatives except him are Republican. Here’s the current state Senate and House composition, to give an idea, red showing Republican and blue Democrat. Not easy to be elected as a Democrat in West Virginia in 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Legislature
EDIT2: Yeah, he announced back in 2023 that he’s not seeking re-election.