Fixing Welfare and Food Stamps

seebell said:

Alcoholic and drug addicts can't get disability based on their addiction alone. They must have another qualifying disability. The law was changed quite a few years ago.

As for obesity: http://www.disabilitysecrets.com/conditions-page-2-45.html

Obesity used to be listed as an impairment in the Listing of Impairments, but the SSA removed it in 1999. The logic was that many obese individuals are able to lead productive lives and hold gainful employment. Today, you can still be awarded disability benefits for obesity, but the SSA will consider obesity under the impairment listings only if 1) its limitations are equivalent to ("equal") those in an impairment listing or 2) it causes or contributes other listed impairments.
As an example of equaling an impairment listing, if the obesity causes an individual to be unable to walk effectively, the individual's condition could "equal" the impairment listing for major dysfunction of a weight bearing joint, an impairment-level listing.

I suggest you turn these people in!

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Displaced Bama Fan said:

This reminds me of the dbag who tried to explain to Rep. Tammy Ducksworth (D) why he was entitled to disability benefits. She was an amputee as a result of Iraq. She's got my vote.

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/...ous-disabled-vet-but-theres-a-deeper-problem/

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bamaga said:

I was as patriotic as they come , but sleep apnea as a 50% disability

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BamaSC said:

Sleep apnea is easily treated with a $800 machine and about $300 a year in supplies. How can that qualify as a disability?

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[The Pentagon had long prohibited veterans from receiving disability pay in addition to their military pensions. But in 2003, officials lifted the ban if a veteran had a disability rating of at least 50%. The change triggered a surge in claims costing billions of dollars — including many by veterans with sleep apnea, which is typically rated as a 50% disability.

The condition tends to strike in middle age due to weight gain and can usually be managed by wearing a breathing mask while sleeping, but the VA does not consider such external devices in its disability decisions.

Retired Navy veteran David Adams said he was surprised that sleep apnea, for which he wears a breathing mask, qualified him for disability pay. At 49, he works as an electrician in an aluminum factory in Davenport, Iowa. He said his monthly disability pay of $910 gives his family financial security by boosting his $1,800-a-month military pension.

"Most of the time, the rules are against you," Adams said. "You get one that's for you, you don't question it."

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"They're filing for the basic wear and tear of military service, not combat injuries," said Phillip Carter, a veterans expert at the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan think tank.

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