No Stimulus Check, No SS Increase

[Carrigon]

I heard Congress or the Senate overturned Obama's plan of giving us the two hundred and fifty dollar check this year. They also overturned extending unemployment and we won't be getting an SS raise at the end of the year. They are still claiming there is no inflation.

How they expect people to manage, I have no idea. And everything is going up, we see it on our bills, we see it at the grocery store.

I am very scared of how I'll manage if they raise my rent this year with no SS increase.

 

[JPV]

Well, they have to save where they can for the next multi-billion dollar bank bailout.

 

[Robin]

We didn't get an increase this year. Are you talking about 2011? I can't find anything about that.

I did find stuff about the temporary unemployment extension which was passed.

ETA: I wouldn't worry about it, Carrigon! They don't usually decide on this stuff until the end of the year. We got a stimulus last winter which was supposed to offset the lack of cost-of-living increase but I doubt we'll get one this year. Let's see if the economy picks up. Maybe things will be OK.

 

[creekfeet]

Carrigon, I can totally relate, as my kids and I, too, live at the mercy of the social service system. I can't pay bills this month until a petty bureaucrat decides to fill out the right form, and they've been holding this particular step in the red tape up for over a month.

Like you I watch the news and brace myself for the effect it's all going to have on our survival.

While things may be okay, they may not, too, and it doesn't hurt to try to think up what we'll do if worst comes to worst. I know I'll be phoning my elected representatives and making lots of noise. I'm lucky that my landlords consider it their Christian duty not to let us go homeless but when we were on the verge of homelessness I found that shelters often won't take chronically ill people because they make everyone get up and out of the shelter for 10 hours each day.

Plan for what you can, but don't panic.

 

[Misfit Toy]

It's so depressing. Do you think it's better in Britain? It must be, right?

 

[Carrigon]

I heard that about the shelters. I even read one woman's story a few years back. She had CFIDS/ME pretty severe, ended up in a homeless shelter. They forced her to do chores, clean up the kitchen, take out the trash. She said she was so sick and in so much pain and she told them that she couldn't do it, after about two months, they threw her out of the shelter. She slept in a car and on the beach from what I remember. It was one of the most horrific stories I'd ever heard. I don't know what's happened to her since. She had family, they threw her out for being sick, that's how she ended up in the shelter. They refused to believe she was sick.

Shelters not taking chronically ill people should be a crime. What do they expect sick people to do?

 

[creekfeet]

Alas, what they expect us to do is live in a car. At the time, I was house-sitting, and I was advised that if my kids and I were in a campsite for a few months, we would have a better chance of getting affordable housing. We were of course too sick to live in a campsite if we could find any alternative, plus, ironically, campsites cost more than we could afford, so we moved 400+ miles to a place where we rent was cheaper, though we're still paying half my monthly income. We lost an excellent social service system and a decent health care system and most of our few remaining social contacts, in the move. We are lucky not to have had to live in the car.

I would like very much to see affordable housing, with attached in-home services, for the disabled, become commonplace.

 

[Carrigon]

OMG, it's not dead yet. They just said they are planning on giving us that $250 as a rebate for our Medicare costs. I don't know if everyone on SS will get it, but those of us who have Medicare should be getting it at the end of the year. It's mentioned in this article.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100322/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

 

[Tammie]

My understanding is that the 250 is ONLY for those who are in the middle of the Medicare drug coverage gap, not everyone on Medicare (ie if you have spent so much on meds that you are in the donut hole where you have to pay out of pocket for meds, then you will get the 250)......in fact this bill truly STINKS for Medicare and I am really upset that it passed.....

Medicare is already in serious trouble and running out of money quickly, but they plan to take more money from it for this, and to further reduce the payments...this is esp the case for Medicare Advantage planes....given that they already pay so poorly most Drs will not accept Medicare, this will basically make it worthless

for an exp, my last test ran over 1,000 and my Medicare Advantage plan paid 80....that is less than EIGHT PERCENT.....the new healthcare "reform" will reduce this - there's nothing there to reduce!!

 

[Carrigon]

I am nervous about it. I'm on a Medicare Advantage Plan, too, and I can't even afford the fifty dollar copay for a specialist right now. I'm going to be applying for Medicaid soon. They keep saying those of us on Medicare are going to be the ones to suffer, that's awful. Plus, they said alot of stuff won't even go into effect until 2014, that's way too far away. And if he's not re-elected, it will probably all get overturned by then.

 

[Tammie]

Unfortunately around here, Medicaid is even more usless than Medicare, excpet for hospital visits.....hopefully where you live there are more docs who take it

and yeah, they say the "Seniors" on Medicare are the ones who are going to suffer - they don't even acknowledge that people with disabilities are also on Medicare (& getting even lower SSDI incomes than most of the seniors).....not to say that I don't feel bad for the seniors - I do - just that I am so sick of being comletely unacknowledged and forgotten about.....every time I have read anything re this healthcare thign, people with disabilities have been completely overlooked - it's like we don't even exist

 

[Carrigon]

That drives me crazy, too. Especially when stupid news people will post articles saying that the average person on SS gets like $1500 in a month, and then everyone who reads it believes it. When in reality, most of us get half or less than that. I get less than half of that in and can't manage on it at all.

 

[caledonia]

they don't even acknowledge that people with disabilities are also on Medicare (& getting even lower SSDI incomes than most of the seniors).....not to say that I don't feel bad for the seniors - I do - just that I am so sick of being comletely unacknowledged and forgotten about.....every time I have read anything re this healthcare thign, people with disabilities have been completely overlooked - it's like we don't even exist

Same here. I wish they would mention the eldery AND disabled. It's just a couple more syllables - how hard can it be? Could AARP be helpful here? Do they represent us at all?

Here are stats from the SSA website: There are 9.4 million of us along with our dependents, accounting for 18% of total (SS) benefits paid.
http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/basicfact.htm

That's almost 1 in 5 - I think that deserves a shout out, don't you?