The Social Security Administration has devised a plan to divide and conquer.
Within the past three years, the administration, in its campaign to reduce cost no matter at whose expense, has proposed, one at a time, a series of regulations to eliminate disability benefits for several categories of disabled persons.
The campaign began with passage of Public Law 104-121, effective March 29, 1996, withdrawing payment of benefits from substance abusers, a group particularly unpopular and in a climate hostile to rehabilitation.
Swelled with its success, the Social Security Administration immediately went after immigrants - legal immigrants - and passed public Law 104-193, effective Aug. 22, 1996. Section 402 prohibits legal immigrants from receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits. The provisions of this law - so draconian that 95-year-old nursing home patients who had been legal residents for 50 years were going to be tossed out on the streets - provoked even the heartiest conservatives to call for an amendment to have the law repealed, and it will now only be applied to new immigrants.
Once again, however, encouraged by its success with substance abusers and immigrants, the administration next went after children, reducing the disability rolls by cutting off tens of thousands of disabled, retarded, autistic and blind children. But due to the efforts of pro bono attorneys and citizens across the country, the administration acknowledged that it had perhaps been too hasty in its march forward and is in the process of re-evaluating 45,000 children's claims.
Still, not being satisfied with targeting needy substance abusers, immigrants and children, the administration decided it would go after the next group of disfavored disabled Americans. But learning from past experience that it could face an uphill battle, the administration revised its strategy.
On March 11, the Social Security Administration proposed to delete "obesity" from its list of disabling impairments. Thus, the administration now plans to target the severely obese for benefit cutoff and to prevent them from getting disability benefits in the future.
Under the current regulation, a person cannot get disability benefits simply because they are "obese" - even if the person is several hundred pounds overweight. Obesity alone will not qualify. A person only qualifies on obesity grounds if he or she is severely overweight (that is, double his or her healthy body weight) and, in addition, suffers from a severe cardiac, pulmonary, circulatory or musculoskeletal condition.
The current regulation recognizes that severe obesity, when coupled with other health problems, can constitute a severe and disabling condition. The proposed change in regulations would require that obese persons suffering with cardiac, pulmonary, circulatory and musculoskeletal conditions be evaluated under regulations pertaining to those other conditions.
But the regulations that pertain to persons with severe cardiac, pulmonary, circulatory or musculoskeletal conditions can be almost impossible to meet. A person who has had a complete heart transplant, for example, is considered to be "not disabled" and able to return to work after only one year following the transplant (Listing 4.09).
Thus a person with a moderately severe cardiac impairment (or pulmonary, circulatory or musculoskeletal impairment, or a combination of such impairments), and who is also seriously overweight, may not qualify at all except for the existence of the obesity regulation.
Are we such a society that we are going to stop people from getting benefits because we don't approve of their disabling condition? It's time to stand up to the Social Security Administration and tell them they cannot divide and conquer. That it is time to treat all human beings equally and with compassion and dignity.