DHS Strikes Again: SNAP

Food stamps' shady, shifty shhhh...enanigans

Last time on #TBI Life - Holiday Hell 2024:

The latest government agency hoop-jumping was such a fun time that it will require a post of its own. Did you know that DHS is making applicants for food stamps ask their doctors for letters that could push ethical medical bounds? Yeah, they were trying to force me to supply a letter where my doc pretends she’s a disability and occupational assessor.

(Spoiler: she’s not.)

In case you don’t know, DHS is the Department of Human Services. This is the government agency who currently feeds my disabled butt via food stamps, a.k.a. SNAP. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Okay, they half-feed me, which is cause for immense gratitude, angelic choirs, and rejoicing. 🌤🙏🌤 At least they’ve finally acknowledged the $700/month in living and medical expenses that I was, at long last, able to take back into my name at the beginning of last year. Until they did that, they expected me to feed myself on $23/month.

It took them half a year to get around to updating their system to my benefit, whereas it took them two weeks to update it to my detriment.

SOP.

Any time they deem you worthy of receiving assistance, ohhhh, do they make you pay for it in mountains of paperwork, brain tasks I’ve been medically removed from since 2001 and that require me to find assistance to accomplish, repetition of these same brain tasks just in a slightly different date range, another repetition because they can’t find my stuff, and another repetition.

Just for good measure?

Nobody knows!

They also spontaneously kick me off the entire program like clockwork every 18 months or so due to a variety of “clerical errors.” Which means I have to reapply from scratch, and go through months of red tape with no food stamps.

They do NOT backpay you for THEIR error.

Ever.¹

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Joy to the World, in the middle of all my neuro-crap, DHS enacted a new feat of hoop-jumping at the end of November: they instituted a policy requiring 20 hours of work per week for anybody who doesn’t qualify for their exemptions.

I’m actually totally behind that.

They’ve also been working like gangbusters, along with every other assistance agency in this country, to boot off the pandemic malingerers, as well as everybody who never should have been receiving help to begin with.

🤘 Rad.🤘

✊ Get some.✊

This is actually long overdue.

Seeing as how I’m one of those people who was receiving disability assistance for a decade before the pandemic, and gee, I’m still disabled to this day—actually, I’m even more disabled because my health has tanked in the last year after a fall down my stairs, the toxic chemical flood of my house, and the return of seizures amidst 11 months of G-man hammering while I lost my primary paperwork-wrangler to stroke. So my disability status should be a pretty big DUH by now.

In classic DHS fashion, it is not.

Apparently they’ve learned well from their shady, shifty Big Brothers how to shuck people using shady, shifty loopholes, because the only individual they will accept proof of a disability exemption from is one’s Primary Care Physician.

Sounds simple, right?

NO.

Not when your disability status is no longer given the benefit of the doubt by DHS because you’ve been unceremoniously booted off of SSI—due to the above-mentioned shady, shifty math-based loophole—not because you’ve become ✨Hashtag Miraculously Cured.✨ (Wouldn’t that be nice?)²

DHS didn’t ask me why I’d been kicked. They only asked, “Do you plan to appeal?” Uh, no. Already talked to a disability lawyer. Apparently there is nothing I can do about SSI because they used a loophole, just like there is nothing to be done about my inability to qualify for SSDI due to my age at the time of disability (28) which limited how many earned income credits I was able to acquire between graduating from college at 25 and becoming disabled (nowhere near enough).

This proof of work exemption is also not simple when you have a new PCP who doesn’t know you from Eve, and who is actually…I dunno. Staunchly firm about her ethical code? When I told her what I needed from her in order to keep my food stamps, she was extraordinarily uncomfortable about writing that letter with her clinic letterhead on top and her legal signature on bottom.

Know why?

SHE IS NOT A DISABILITY OR OCCUPATIONAL ASSESSOR.

Know who is?

My case worker from Vocational Rehabilitation: the very agency that all these government departments sent me to with their Ticket To Work. Every time they send me paperwork, they try to get me back to being gainfully employed through this program. I was super excited about this program!

I was in it for five years straight.

Fiiiiiive…yeeeeeears…

I went through multiple case workers, as well as both the Traditional Employment and Self-Employment tracks, but we had to eventually tap out and close my case last year. Yet I remain so much of a Doubting Theresa about the words “I can’t” that I had my case reviewed last summer by Little Rock Voc Rehab, just to see if there were any stones left unturned.

Nope.

(Not that this ever stops me from trying to figure out how to jerry-rig my way back into “watch me, I can, too.”)

Yet a letter from my case worker who is tasked with ASSESSING OCCUPATIONAL PROS, CONS & DISABILITIES, and then helping people find EMPLOYMENT OPTIONS within their parameters was not good enough for DHS. Ohhhhh, no. My case worker only has a Master’s Degree in this stuff, decades of experience, and he’s only the guy who trains all the other case workers, but what does he know?

He doesn’t have that Almighty M.D. behind his name.

🎶 Stooopid boy…da-na-da-na
🎶 Stoooopid boy…

🎶 Maybe if he was M…D!
🎶 Maybe he would be wor…thy!
🎶 What a dumb, useless de…gree!

🎶 Now they’re callin’ him a stoopid boy.

When I started looking into what it would take to assemble my entire medical team and compile letters from them about everything they treat me for in a Hail Mary effort to prove my own darn disability case all over again,³ I did not encounter a single medical professional on my team who wasn’t horrified by this new policy.

Asking doctors to either make statements that go beyond the ethical parameters of their license, or knowingly doom their patient to getting kicked off food stamps?

UNCONSCIONABLE.

So is making doctors and patients fill out gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs…inhaaaaaale…and gobs of paperwork to prove disability. Over and over again. And again. And once more. Forever.

So is sending a disabled applicant to a stranger with a generalized “M.D.” behind their name who works for the agency with the sole objective of disqualifying people and branding us as “big ole fakers.” (The nasty, un-PC name used by one of my besties who’s been dealing with the VA since the 70s is “House Whore.”)

Yes, there are fakers. Absolutely. Too many of them. And they ruin it for those of us who really need help.

It’s unconscionable that, in order to root them out, all disabled applicants are treated as though we’re guilty until proven innocent, and then we’re hurled back down into the guilty pile every 3-12 months.

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After my second appointment with my PCP at the beginning of January, I spent yet another two hours on the phone with DHS in the hopes of figuring this mess out. After 45 minutes of listening to their obnoxious on-hold music, pockmarked by brain-melting, infuriating jaw-jackery every 20 or 10 or .5 seconds for the third time in a week, the agent put me on hold again so she could go poll her co-workers. Nobody had any solutions except “get your PCP on board or try to prove the case yourself.”

Hahahahahahah! Good one. My PCP wasn’t budging.

(BTW DHS’s on-hold system is, without doubt, the most obnoxious that I’ve encountered so far. Social Security, on the other hand, is the most diabolically infuriating. They design these systems purposely so you’ll scream, froth at the mouth, pull your hair out, and hang up.)

After I explained the reasons for my doctors’ shock and revulsion, even the DHS agent saw our point of view, but she couldn’t do anything about it. So she put me on hold for the third time to talk to her supervisor. And another supervisor.

Hey, if I have to be on hold again for that reason, I’ll take it!

Didn’t matter. Only my PCP’s letter would do. How convenient for them. They’re allowed to get away this because…

Because they are.

Thankfully, all the creative wording that I, the agent, her colleagues, and her supervisors came up with inspired my doctor to write a letter that stayed within the bounds of her ethical limitations.

Instead of performing an occupational/disability assessment she is not licensed to perform, she medically backed up the letter from the person who IS qualified to make such statements about my ability to pull off a 20 hour/week job. She then got alllll sorts of M.D.-ish on them, using the 5-syllable versions of my medical conditions that inspired Voc Rehab to finally tap out and close my case.

🤘🤓🤘

We’ll see if this is “good enough” or not.

As is so often the case with these government paperwork nightmares, I wasn’t able to get the letter until the day I had to turn it in. I was fifteen minutes out from being picked up by my dad (I currently can’t drive from the latest neurological dookie-storm) when I thought, Ya know…I checked before I got dressed and ate breakfast. I wonder if it might happen to be—

It was! She’d put a rush on it, bless her.

The letter was ready for me to pick it up at the hospital, so I dashed to my 2-inch-thick reapplication packet to pull out the screenshot of the message from my doctor’s nurse, saying, “Doc will write you the letter, but she won’t get to it until next week.” I had compiled a mountain of paperwork from the rest of my team to back up that screenshot until her letterhead and fancy Doc-signature could stamp some medical officialness onto these shenanigans.

After removing all those needlessly killed trees, I also deleted the explanation paragraphs from my letter, reprinted it, and zoomed to the hospital for pickup.

This left me just enough time to get my boobs and half my armpit smashed flat while having my degenerated spine torqued and my head nearly twisted off my neck with my lips squarshed up against a cold, cackling machine.

Woot and hallelujah, the mammogram confirmed what December’s emergency chest X-ray had said in its best Arnold Schwartzeneggar voice: “It’s naht a toomah.”

Yaaaaay!

Of course, that means we still don’t know what made my pupil go all dilated, what IS causing my stabbing chest pains since 2010, and why my neurology has gone all sorts of ape-dookie for the past year.

Just another day in TBI-Land.

Oh. And Grrl Land.

Ya know, come to think of it, many of the metaphors for getting a mammogram could pretty much be applied to navigating The Matrix and DisabilityLand on TBI. Huh. Fascinating…

(This one is a little strobey-flashy. But worth it.)

When all this shenaniganry has shaken out, there will be nasty-grams written to people who are supposed to keep these agencies in check. I don’t have much faith in that, after all the other letters I and my loved ones have written over the past two decades, but hey. It’s what we do. Can’t expect The Matrix to change if watchdogs don’t know what’s going on at the ground level from the people actually impacted by these policies.

All righty, that’s it for now. Hope you’re all keeping healthy and warm! (Or cool, if it’s summer for you.)

🎶 The dancer-grrl is faced with G-men
Shady and quite awful
She’s not sure how these loopholes aren’t
Unconscionably unlawful
It’s hard to fathom how the dancer
Managed to prance through it
Or how a decent person like yourself
Would want to view it…

So look awaaaaay…look awaaaay…
This blog will wreck your morning,
Your whole life and your nice day.
Every tripe-stuffed episode
Is nothing but dismay so look away… 🎶

Oh, you’re into tales like these?
That’s cool:

**Wait, you don’t know which tune I’m filking today?

© 2024 Hartebeast

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RELATED POSTS:

1. Oh, you’re not rolling your eyes, nodding, and snarl-laughing because you’re well-versed in what I mean by all that?

HOW DEHUMANIZING ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS HARM DISABLED PEOPLE

I’m not sure where I stand on their lengthy lists of proposed solutions. The amount of Spoons that it would take for me to analyze each one and consider all the impacts? BWAhahahaha. I don’t have that in me. The reason I’m sharing this article is that the real-life anecdotes and the experience described is what I’ve been living since 2000.

2. “What the bleep? If you’re capable of writing this post, then you’re capable of working a meeeeeasly 20 hours. If you’re capable of advocating for yourself, then you can’t be disabled! You’re just a big, fat, lazy faker!”

This is the kind of crap that gets said to the disabled, especially those of us with “invisible” or “hidden” conditions, ALLL the time.

First, I’m capable of writing a post like this because I’m a writer and I already had to go over and over and over these details with my whole medical and caregiving team for the past few months. I am capable of writing posts that detail my adventures with TBI and disability because—still a writer—and I have to compile all this crap over and over and over all year long for my doctors and these government agencies. Something I’ve had to do for 23 flippin’ years straight.

Second, being disabled does not mean that the only thing I’m capable of doing is rocking and drooling in the corner. (Although there are days like that.)

Third, have you been here with my caregivers to see what it actually takes to get me to the point where I can write this post? Where I can make a new dance? Where I can write a new chapter of a novel or make an online course that I have no ability to sell without the proper disability supports?

In other words, all the activities that Voc Rehab determined were the most likely avenues for me to ever have an income again because I can do them in the silence and solitude of my home. Here’s the kicker: provided I can find a 49% business partner to do all the business aspects of running my business for free until we make money.

🤔🧐🤨

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Lastly, have you seen the full extent of my medical and Voc Rehab records? No? Then please, go down and request them. Ohhhh, you’re not qualified to file a request like that and have it honored?

3. In case it’s not obvious, I’m not a lawyer, doctor, assessor, or any other type of disability professional so don’t take my experience as Law for your situation. This is simply what’s been going on for me.