Some politicians are saying the new debate is, “healthcare or jobs”, but I do not believe it has to be that way. The reality is, if you have a job you will generally have better healthcare. We need both. So, we need to fight harder for people with disabilities to get a bigger piece of the employment pie.
- For many, jobs and health insurance go hand in hand
- Employment of people with disabilities is far lower than the general population
- We need meaningful healthcare reform AND a level playing field for jobs
More
Check out Think Beyond The Label“Think Beyond the Label” is a new public awareness campaign in print, billboards and TV using humor instead of the “pity appeal” to encourage hires people with disabilities, and I think and hope it will be effective. Their tactic is to make us realize that we are all impaired, one way or another. They make fun of people that are “fashion deficit” or “jargon prone” or to have “volume control syndrome” or my favorite “rhythm impaired”, showing a white businessman trying to dance. The take home message is, “Just because someone moves a little differently, doesn’t mean that they can’t move your business forward. That includes people with disabilities.”
We should all support this campaign by sharing it with our friends, and asking our own organizations with web sites to care a link to the campaign and encourage involvement.
Another interesting stop:
Health & Disability Advocates (HDA), a national nonprofit organization that promotes income security and improved health care access for children, people with disabilities, and low-income older adults, is spearheading the Think beyond the Label campaign.
Nothing like laughter:
Have some fun with family, friends and colleagues by calling out their unique quirks by sending Label Maker eCards.
Andy Hicks
Good deal Andy! I think many of us have become accustomed to thinking in terms of trade offs. You’re right, no trade-offs needed here. Employment and health are both important and often go hand in hand for many people. Tough to find and keep a job if you can’t stay healthy, and equally tough to get good healthcare without a job. Both would appear to work nicely together, for everyone.
I agree with ADMIN that quality healthcare and employment go hand-in-hand. As a full time wheelchair user who IS employed with access to state-of-the-art DME’s, I recognize the disparity in the community every time I see someone in a woefully inadequate wheelchair due to lack of better healthcare coverage.
Now, while I’m a big believer in having more by working harder that the next guy, a proper mobility device to use for employment or interactions in the community should not be dependent on having more $$$ but should be a standard of care for all. I’m not talking everyone gets a Cadillac vs a Cobalt just that mobility device provision should be based on what a person needs to prevent secondary conditions AND to have proper community access. It only makes sense.
Dear Andy Hicks (and the other posters to this thread),
Politician, Bureaucrat or choose your own prefixed name with a four letter word.
What ever you want to call the bozo system as it is set up currently, is broken. Having been a SSDI beneficiary I find it difficult to understand how the clowns can only allow for “one or the other” type of decision making.
Having paid into the system with FICA and Medicare and now being in need for those services how can an able bodied bureaucrat be limited to just two supposedly different directions for “competing” goals? Those of us with with spinal cord injury struggle on a daily basis to multitask and overcome any limitations in our lives. When we want to do more than what the system offers us why we are observed in the light of a criminal, scammer, evil doer?
It is my observation that:
1) Social Security and CMS is BROKEN
2) Trusting in a Republican or Democrat to fix the problem will just cloud or obscure the ideal solution.
3) We, the truly disabled, should have a say in how WE SHOULD BE PERMITTED to utilize our benefits, abilities, skills to improve our lives with out loosing or diminishing critical medical coverage we have obtained.
4) As the current system is established the cash benefit for SSDI (exterior to Medicare premiums) is the least importance for some one who wants to and or can work. For me I would rather trade in the remainder of the cash benefit (post Medicare Premium deduction) for the ability to A) Work B) Not have FICA or Medicare withdrawn from my paycheck C) Not be forced out of Trial Work Period D) Loose Medicare
5) The Trial Work Period for SSDI beneficiaries (whom have paid into the system) assumes that Disabled Americans should be proportionately equated in the same venue as welfare or Supplemental Security Income (Some one that might not have EVER paid a dime into the system).
6) By limiting monetary gross earnings under Trial Work Period to $720 (calendar year 2010) per month is discriminatory against the disabled {If Federal minimum wage is: A) $7.25 per hour the system B)prohibits less than a full month earnings under Federal Labor Law}. This limiting factor promulgates that any one who had FICA with holdings from “overtime” pre-injury is now prohibited in performing to that same standard of work achievement before a Trial Work Period month is accrued. This breech of contract is C)the reason why the Social Security Administration (& CMS) needs to be more forth right with specifically the Spinal Cord Injury population with established work history (or be permanently augmented).
7) The Trial Work Period system makes no conjugation when a worker looses a job in the “Consecutive 60 month period” from one employer with out allowing for an “Unsuccessful Work Attempt”. For example: if the SSDI Beneficiary looses employment from a private company and are forced to fight, scrounge, or find other means for employment in the remainder of the 60 consecutive months, would that not be an Attempt at Work with out Success? In the current economic combative situation only a governmental worker might be able to sustain employment longer than 9 month in a given 60 month period (What does that say for our Nations current innovative and Hopeful spirit?)
9) The current Health Insurance Industry Practice of “Pre-Existing Condition” is the reason why every American should resent the broken-ness of United States of America Health Care System. This practice when used against the spinal cord injury community is not only discriminatory but overtly prejudicial for limiting and or denying medical access.
10) Current federal employee roster is disproportionately skewed in favor of the able body population. Greater efforts should be made to equalize the representation of spinal cord injured Americans into the current competitive Federal workforce with accommodations that are set forth by the disabled worker. If the ADA was written to assist the disabled to overcome discrimination then why does the SCI population have to fight tooth and nail for the term “reasonable”?
11) Private Companies that make an effort to employ the spinal cord injury population more than an existing Federal Government department (with out equal or greater population density according to the 2010 census) should be provided with priority to no bid or federally funded projects, grants or programs.
12) Federal United States budget dollars for Spinal Cord Injury Research is significantly lesser money allocated per population density than other more minor represented medical need populations (HIV/AIDS).
13) For what Javits-Wagner-O’day (JWOD) did for the blind, we should be able to do more with in the SCI community. I am my own best advocate. If we are not going to do for our selves then who is going to help us?
14) Mobilizing at 1660 L Street, NW, Suite 510 Washington, DC 20034 might just make a SOB (Senate Office Building) staffer turn his or her head.