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Comment by genewitch | Hacker News Reader

I have a friend 'trapped' by government aid. They receive some benefits from being diagnosed with something as a minor and their father received a government aid that conferred to them. Its SSDI IIRC; the rules say they can't get married, can't own property, can't earn more than $X/unit of time.

The 27 years I've known them have been punctuated by my saying "what if you do this to solve your current issue" and the reply is "I'll lose my benefits"

I'm unfit to say if they need it; as in I am unsure if their life would be worse or better without.

Don't read too much into the setup, above; my memory is fuzzy unless I am directly talking to them about it, and even so they correct me like, "its not ssi it's ssdi," or whatever it is. This is to +1 with an anecdote.

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I dated a disabled woman for a bit, and this is exactly how it was. Every possible solution to her situation had better be 100% guaranteed to work, because it was guaranteed to get her ejected from SSDI, never able to reapply unless she developed a new and unrelated disability.

She wasn't even allowed to save money for an emergency fund or a large purchase because there was a limit to how much liquid cash she could have at any time, and it was something like $2000. If she demonstrated an ability to save more than that, the bureaucrats would take that as irrefutable evidence that she was well enough off to not need help, and boot her from the program.

Every single thing about the way that program is administered actively prevents its users from bettering their situation.

a refrain i hear a lot from my friend, who does actually have issues, i wasn't trying to imply they didn't^, is, "What if i [go to school], get a job, and then something happens where i can't work, but they've already kicked me off? I'd be in a way worse position"

They could go to school and make enough money to take care of themselves, obviously, but the threat of losing the safety net is enough that they still never went to school, and have only worked for retail a few times over the years for maybe 6-12 hours a week, obviously at minimum wage.

^ just in case it seems that way.

No worries, I didn't take it that way.

I heard the same thing. Even if her condition were to be "cured", if it ever came back she'd be screwed. The system would take that as proof that her condition was fixable and was therefore not a disability.

>can't get married<br> This is the next frontier in marriage equality.

you joke but it means they can't get decent health insurance, since they also cannot work full time.

Pretty sure you get Medicaid if you are on disability, no?

But I'm from somewhere that has loads of people on benefits, but no one says "disability" it's medical retirement and they get around all the restrictions by doing gig work under other people's name, and then taking their split in cash 80/20.

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