I saw a patient Friday who has 3 children. They are all out of wedlock. She is on Medicaid and has foodstamps (possibly other govt programs too but I'm not sure). She has a new iphone 6, a Prada purse and drives a Porsche (unless the keychain is fake). How does she afford these items if she's poor? She didn't marry the father of her last child but lives with him and he's fairly well off. They can afford health insurance and food for the 3 kids and her but why marry and give up the "free ride"
My last patient of the day on Thursday is "disabled". He's 42 and was laid off from his framing job in 2008 or 2009 when the housing market crashed. The state of MN (and many other states employ the same tactic) paid an agency to do all of the paper work to qualify him for social security disability due to his back pain. He has, after all, "degenerative disc disease". For those of you who've heard this term, it is a normal aging process where the discs in the back dry out. It is not a disease and has no correlation with back pain. The fact the gentleman is 5'10" and 360 does have a correlation with back pain. He is now on SSI and he gets Medicare. It's a great deal because now he's paid nearly as much as he made as a framer but he now has no worries since he's also on Medicare for the rest of his life. Furthermore, he can do odd jobs on the side for cash under the table (not reported as income) and for 10-15 hours a week he actually makes more than he did when he worked as a framer. Clearly he's not actually disabled and while the work on the side is fraud, his qualifications for SSI and Medicare are legit. Another "free ride"
Wish I could say these are exceptions but 9 out of 10 patients I have under 65 who're "disabled" are perfectly capable of working many jobs. There's not much incentive to pursue it when there's a "free ride"
How's that Jimmy? It's not from Fox News.
