I thank God that I was blessed to regain enough health to do something with my life. Everyone is not fortunate enough to just move on with their lives without disability benefits. Sometimes it takes several years to find adequate care and get better, as it did in my case. Sometimes access to quality care comes too late in the course of an illness, through lack of funds or lack of knowledge, and leads to permanent disability or death. I’ve heard tales of people who were approved for benefits after death.

The financial fallout can be devastating. Friends and acquaintances of mine have lost their homes or come dangerously close. That’s not the kind of stress you need when you’re sick.

Just think about how much money the government wastes in retrying cases with legitimate claims–paying people to process the endless forms that accompany a claim, sending applicants for consultation with medical professionals who often know little about the illness they are evaluating, paying administrative law judges who know little or nothing about medicine. Why would anyone submit themselves to the stress of this process and the humiliation of being called a malingerer or hypochondriac over and over without a legitimate claim?

Those who win that grueling battle rarely do so without hiring a lawyer, and the lawyers receive 25 percent of the claim. A former blogger and friend of mine has a wonderful solution. Instead of penalizing the claimant, make the Social Security Administration pay the lawyer for turning down a legitimate claim. That would give the government incentive to speed up needed reforms.

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