TIL in 1989, the US government set $2,000 as the limit for how much money someone with a disability can keep in savings and remain eligible for federal benefits
It’s been decades since the government set how much money someone with a disability can keep in savings and still be eligible for Supplemental Security Income benefits.
The Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) was created in 1972 under the Nixon administration to provide financial support to low-income seniors and disabled people. An effort to federalize state-level adult support programs across the country, SSI is a means-tested program—there are financial requirements to be eligible. In the case of SSI, as of its last adjustment in 1989, enrollees cannot have savings of more than $2,000 as an individual or $3,000 as a family. Furthermore, SSI beneficiaries are prohibited from having retirement accounts, life insurance policies, certain types of personal property, funeral/burial policies, and access to other types of income.
Definitely a safe assumption. I did the math once for the salary of a SNAP fraud investigator and they would have had to kick something like two dozen full families off benefits every month to even justify their annual pay, let alone overhead, administration . . .
sometimes malice trumps economic incentive.
The health insurance that comes with my SSI just denied coverage for a medication that might help me manage my disability.
I can't imagine. Every day you're looking people in the face telling them that a state that absolutely could help them is instead condemning them to torment and death. Every single day, all day long.
Social security won't cover a drug cocktail injected into my spine that I should be getting monthly but it's like $3,000 a shot. It's approved for people with my condition but only if they got it from diabetes. If it's the result of a trauma injury, it's not FDA approved, so it's not covered.
Before I lost that coverage, the doctors and I were looking into weaning me off vicodin. That didn't happen, so now I've been on it for over a decade (you're only supposed to take it for like 6 months at most lmao).