Disability thoughts - Thanksgiving and Confusion
Conundrum - co·nun·drum - from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary; first known use in 1645.
1: a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun
2 a : a question or problem having only a conjectural answer
b : an intricate and difficult problem
b : an intricate and difficult problem
The word to describe my current thoughts seems to have existed some 200 years prior to the invention of accident or disability insurance, but nonetheless that seems the best single word to sum up the situation not only for me, but for many other disabled friends.
So yes, my title is correct; I approach this subject with great thankfulness and yet much confusion.
Though I would love to obtain a paying job, to do so threatens me with the loss of my medical insurance (Medicare) and my social security disability (SSD) monthly payments which allow us to stay in our home and meet expenses. To be more specific, if I were to earn more than $750 per month, I would then lose my medical insurance and SSD (which alone is significantly more than $750/month). That is what I can legally earn per month, yet compared to others I know with spinal cord injuries or other disabilities, I have found their threshold levels are set even lower than mine! Perhaps this is due to my pre-injury income compared to theirs and/or the number of years I had paid into Social Security, though I am not certain how the calculations are made.
Though extremely grateful for my medical insurance and SSD payments, it seems the ceiling of what I could earn per month ought to be raised, and not just for me, but for many others as well. In doing so we could tap into a huge resource of talent, those disabled who can bring many skills back into the job market.
Read onward for more thoughts on this subject; my own recent personal experience, and a solution I have in mind. Believe me, I have already begun to share some of these thoughts with my bicycling buddy from just up the street, Jay Inslee - US Congressman, who is currently running for governor of Washington state.
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