One of the things that most terrifies me in the world \u2013 right up there with being in a hospital without someone to advocate for me \u2013 is not having the paperwork or other things I need to get the services I\u2019m entitled to or to protect myself from some kind of officialdom.<\/p>\n
This was brought home to me the other day when talking to someone who is helping a neighbor who needs a health aide. This person is able to do the work, but was struggling with having the right paperwork of their own to get signed up with the office that would pay them to be the aide.<\/p>\n
They have IDs, but maybe not the right kind of IDs. They\u2019re signed up for some things, but they\u2019ve lost the password.<\/p>\n
Maybe it sounds like they\u2019ve been careless, and maybe they have been, but you shouldn\u2019t have to be so damn careful about such things. It should be easy to get what you need, not a damn fight for every little thing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not, mind you, about certification for the job. It\u2019s just not having exactly the right ID cards.<\/p>\n
And they also had to get my neighbor signed up for the care, which is another complicated step in the process.<\/p>\n
You have to prove you\u2019re entitled to help, after all. The fact that you\u2019re sick isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
I can do this for myself, but then I have a law degree and have in the past done the kind of work where you help people who are in trouble due to misplaced or screwed up paperwork. I also will jump on top of a problem that has elements that could be disastrous because, as I said, this is the sort of thing that scares me.<\/p>\n
I file my taxes on time. I pay my bills on time. I keep up with my IDs. And I still panic over this kind of stuff.<\/p>\n
I mean, every time I\u2019m headed for an airport, I have a coughing fit that is clearly a panic attack. (I have allergies, but this is different.) I\u2019m tense until I\u2019m through TSA.<\/p>\n
And mind you, I\u2019m an old white woman with the right paperwork and I make a point of packing carefully so that I don\u2019t draw any attention. <\/p>\n
I try to be careful because I\u2019m terrified of what happens if you are missing something crucial, especially when it\u2019s not something anyone in their right mind would think was actually crucial.<\/p>\n
There are days when I wonder how people who didn\u2019t go to law school survive in this society.<\/p>\n
And I also worry about what happens if I\u2019m too sick to take care of all those details.<\/p>\n
There are so many rules to prevent \u201cfraud\u201d and yet the actual fraud that happens in social services is usually someone who figures out how to milk the system as a provider.<\/p>\n
The system doesn\u2019t seem to stop them until they\u2019ve made millions, partly because these systems are made for people who know how to make it look like everything is fine.<\/p>\n
But the people who need things rarely live the kind of lives where everything is in perfect order. If you\u2019re just barely making ends meet, there isn\u2019t a lot of room for fixing problems that don\u2019t look serious at the time.<\/p>\n
And now I read that they want to cut Medicaid and even add work requirements to it. Anything to make it harder for people to get what they need.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not even the new abuses being introduced into the system \u2013 the possibility that someone can be arrested and even shipped out of the country without any kind of due process or that benefits long earned may be denied \u2013 that brought on this rant.<\/p>\n
The problems I\u2019m talking about have been there for awhile and while they\u2019ll surely get worse under the Stupid Coup, it\u2019s not like it was easy before.<\/p>\n
The richest country in the world has always done a lousy job of taking care of its people. It\u2019s starting to feel like everybody needs a lawyer on call just to survive.<\/p>\n
Have you seen what lawyers charge these days?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things that most terrifies me in the world \u2013 right up there with being in a hospital without someone to advocate for me \u2013 is not having the paperwork or other things I need to get the services I\u2019m entitled to or to protect myself from some kind of officialdom. This was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[701,17],"tags":[1053,1052],"class_list":["post-4020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-rants","tag-health-care","tag-social-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4021,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020\/revisions\/4021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}