Posted on 04/13/2016 7:02:40 PM PDT by doldrumsforgop
Hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers will now have an easier path to getting their loans discharged, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.
The Department of Education will send letters to 387,000 people they’ve identified as being eligible for a total and permanent disability discharge, a designation that allows federal student loan borrowers who can’t work because of a disability to have their loans forgiven. The borrowers identified by the Department won’t have to go through the typical application process for receiving a disability discharge, which requires sending in documented proof of their disability. Instead, the borrower will simply have to sign and return the completed application enclosed in the letter.
If every borrower identified by the Department decides to have his or her debt forgiven, the government will end up discharging more than $7.7 billion in debt, according to the Department.
“Americans with disabilities have a right to student loan relief,” Ted Mitchell, the undersecretary of education, said in a statement. “And we need to make it easier, not harder, for them to receive the benefits they are due.” About 179,000 of the borrowers identified by the Department are in default on their student loans, and of that group more than 100,000 are at risk of having their tax refunds or Social Security checks garnished to pay off the debt. Often borrowers losing out on these benefits aren’t even aware that they’re eligible for a disability discharge, said Persis Yu, the director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center.
“Borrowers just frankly don’t know about this program,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
If doctors would only read these forms before they sign:
The criteria for disability to discharge student loans, at least in the past if they are not foisting something new, state that the “patient” must be unable to do ANYTHING AT ALL THAT IS WORTHY OF REMUNERATION in essence in order to be considered “disabled” for the purposes of federal student loan forgiveness.
If the “patient” can answer a phone for 1 hour a few times a week, then “they” are not “disabled.”
IN general, if the patient is capable of reading a notice and calling and making an appointment and going to a doctor to request discharge of a loan (that he or she has typically IGNORED for YEARS before any “disability”), then that proves that he or she is capable of meaningful work to a degree that discharge of a federal student loan is prohibited.
This entire thing is BOGUS and depends on dense legalistic small print forms being misread by doctors all over our land.
Get your best “Gomer Pyle” voice in your head for this:
“Bogus Bogus, Bogus!”
Ok, I am having a hard time believing there are nearly half a million people who were fine when they went to school but became permanently disabled before they could pay off their loans.
I believe in supporting, and supporting well, those Americans who are truly completely helpless. Happy to give my tax dollars to them, though I’d prefer less of a greedy middleman.
But we are not talking about many people! If they were well enough to attend college, they should be well enough to work, with the exception of the few who since then have had their brains or bodies completely shattered in an accident or devasting illness. There are NOT half a million or so of them.
A while back I was traveling and stopped in a fast food restaurant. The woman behind the counter seemed to be having a difficult day so I told her the afternoon would be over soon. She replied that it would all be over soon. She hoped to be getting her 'crazy money' next month. I asked her what that meant. She said she was going out on disability because working made her psychologically upset. Disability crazy money.
I just want to cry. I’m self-employed. I’ve always worked long hours, and since Obamacare, I’ve been working even longer hours to pay for the increased health insurance costs. We saved and paid for most of our children’s college expenses, and they kids worked to pay for the rest. I feel like such a chump.
I will say it again - Conservatives can never compete with free stuff given away by the nanny state - who pays for it all with printed, fiat currency, and massive debt courtesy of the Federal Reserve.
Until that is fixed, Conservatives will see the country sliding away from them.
A someone who payed their college tuition bills via an ROTC scholarship, my initial response to this farkling bullfarking crap is unprintable.
I do not farking deserve to pay for other people motherfarking stupid farking decisions, damn it!
It is not the education institutions that take it in the shorts. They are paid up front.
The banks get shafted.
And they have to make the money up from we, the people.
Most SS Disability Claims nowadays are based on Psychological Disability, not Physical Disability.
Diagnosed as Bi Polar, get a Check. Drug Addict, ditto. They think up new problems every day.
A Lawyer advertises on TV here in S. CA all the time. He is also a Psychologist and he knows how you can get your Check.
He has real people in his Commercials boasting that they got their Check, the one they deserved. Not a one is missing Limbs or sitting in a Wheelchair. They are also pretty young, looking to be in their 20’s and 30’s.
It’s a scam, pure and simple.
You are right ...and we thought Bubba got wild in his last year ...this year will be astounding
You’d be amazed to see what constitutes a ‘disability’ these days. SSDI is one of the biggest ripoffs going.
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The repubs are the majority...what traitors to their electorate...TRAITORS!!!
How do they go to school if they’re disabled? And is that different than a job where they sit in a cubical running a computer?
All these loans getting forgiven and I’m not one of the lucky few.
Instead, I have to pay for the others getting their loans forgiven.
Bah.
"...Because it says so right here in the Bill of Rights!"
Regards,
It’s not connected to the election, just a coincidence...
My disability is that I’m a misgendered transsexual.
I should have been born a woman so that my transitioning to a man could be both celebrated and also clearly identify me as a transsexual entitled to all the rights and privileges that ought to be bestowed upon ones so oppressed.
But instead, by accident of birth, I was cursed to be both born biologically as a man AND to identify as a man. So having been denied the need to undergo a sex change transitioning, I am most definitely disabled.
Where do I sign up?
What percent are black? Another perk for Holder’s people.
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