Everybody goes through difficult periods in their lives, and there are good and needed government programs available to help during those times. Those programs often come under attack by political pundits (especially during an election year) and the air gets filled with misinformation as a result. Unfortunately, that means that many people who need and deserve benefits sometimes don’t even turn in a disability or SSI application.
One of the best of these programs is SSI, which stands for Supplemental Security Income. Essentially, SSI is designed to help out when something prevents a worker from doing his or her job for a short period. For example, an acute illness can quickly gobble up sick time and cut into a worker’s income. Also, if a child is injured or severely ill, his parents might need to adjust their workloads in order to provide adequate care.
Some people consider every safety net service provided by the government to be a license to slack off, and SSI is unfortunately painted with this brush. This is sad, since it is anything but that. It applies only to people who are working, and it provides only temporary assistance.
The suite of programs that are provided through the Social Security Administration – including social security, disability, and SSI – are essentially facets of a huge work-insurance program that is run by the government. Every time we get a paycheck we pay into these programs with a portion of our earnings. Those payments are essentially our premiums, which are pooled together with everybody else’s premiums in order to pay out benefits.
Some people just don’t like to work, but if you don’t work you don’t pay into these programs, and the benefits aren’t available to you. These programs are worker-oriented, designed to provide assistance to those who would work, but who are prevented from working by a physical or mental health issue. In many cases, if these programs were not available, workers would not take adequate care of themselves and would end up with much more severe conditions as a result.
And those who thumb their noses at these programs should bear in mind that when someone takes benefits to care for a family member, that reinforces the very behavior that we should value the most in our society. Opponents of social welfare programs say that family should be the first safety net, and so it should be. Rather than crying over the cost, we should salute the sacrifice of those who leave their work to take on the (usually much more difficult) task of caring for a loved one in poor health.
Not that these programs are immune from abuse. Any time there’s a pile of money sitting somewhere, there are going to be plenty of people trying to figure out how to get at it. And for some people, avoiding work really is a full time job. Fraudulent SSI claims account for a tiny fraction of the benefits that are paid out, but even a few bad apples require vigilance on the part of the program administrators.
If you are going to file an SSI application, it is important to be meticulous and absolutely factual in filling out the forms, and it is usually worth the expense to hire someone who knows the process to facilitate it for you.