· you have a STEM degree (an associates’ in Biology obtained before the onset of any disability)
· you’re intelligent, so you can adapt to work (when my disabilities are all physical)
· “your functional limitations line up with your neurologist’s report on you, but we still believe you can work”
· the migraine aborters actually work 100% at taking all migraine pain away, so I “can work”
· “you may have some limitations” (ha), “but you can adapt to work” (and absolutely no work is listed)

I had a friend whose mother had to apply for disability for them four separate times while they were a child, just to get them approved. That was four separate applications that she had to put in. Another case that I heard about was the friend of several friends waiting for a hearing after having been denied twice, just to die in her sleep. And I read about someone who had to advance it to a hearing for leukemia, at which point they were approved, but they died soon after because they could not start therapy for their cancer in time to save their life. This is literally what disabled people in the United States have to deal with. They have to put in application after application, or advance it to a hearing and wait up to two years to get in front of an administrative law judge, hoping that they can hold their heads above water while they do, also hoping that they don’t actually die before disability benefits are granted. Like I’ve mentioned before, 13,000 people die per calendar year here because they actually are disabled and they kept being denied benefits. That is one hell of an “oops”. I’m starting to think that it’s intentional on the part of this country, a feature, not a “bug”.

13,000.

That is roughly how many people actually die every year in the United States because they apply for disability benefits (SSDI or SSI) and are denied, sometimes continuously. That’s thirteen. Thousand. People.

They die for a number of reasons.

Lack of access to healthcare and medication.

Inability to afford housing.

Not being able to buy themselves food.

The list goes on, but I’m sure I’ve made my point by now.

Roughly two-thirds of applicants are denied when they submit their initial application, and a staggering 80% of applicants are denied if they request that Social Security reconsider their application. For those who choose to advance their application for benefits to a hearing with an administrative law judge after this second denial, the wait to get in front of a judge in some capacity can take up to two years in some states, and between half and 60% of applicants have their benefits approved at that stage… so no matter how you look at it, the odds do not exactly appear to be in your favor (although older individuals seem to have an easier time obtaining and securing disability benefits for themselves, and I’m told that children who “age onto the rolls” as adults seem to have a slightly easier time depending on just what their disabilities are).

And some of them die right after getting approved after having literally fought the system for years.

They die because they weren’t able to access the things that they needed in time because they had to fight to get what they were rightfully owed. They count here. Their stories are still important. Just as important.

This may not surprise very many of you given the… political climate in the United States, at least as far as it relates to healthcare, but it will probably sadden and shock those of you who are not familiar with the number, but that is the number. Because people with legitimate disabilities who are not able to work are being denied for sometimes the most contradictory, superfluous reasons, approximately thirteen thousand people die in the United States every year as a result of that, and to me, that is thirteen thousand people (or however many people actually die in the United States as a result of this) too many. I almost want to laugh — and sometimes I actually do — when people say, “oh, you’re disabled, just apply for disability” as though it were really that simple. I’m not sure if the system is intentionally set up to be like this or what. It may well be.