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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released updated guidance on Tuesday saying that an individual can be considered to have a disability after contracting COVID-19 under certain circumstances. According to the EEOC's new guidance, a person who has or was previously diagnosed with COVID-19 can be considered disabled if the condition or any the symptoms they experience cause “physical or mental” impairment that “substantially limits one or more major life activities.” People who tested positive for COVID-19 but were asymptomatic or experienced mild symptoms that resolved without issue will not be considered disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),...

Our treatment of troops returning from combat has led to a culture of permanent disability. They deserve better. Far too often, however, veterans returning to the civilian world are diverted from paths of self-sufficiency and shuffled down paths of dependency and dysfunction. I witnessed this personally at Walter Reed. Soldiers were transformed from men and women of consequence—bravely fighting for their country—to wards of the state, dependent on others and on charity for their sustenance, purpose and meaning. One soldier whom I knew had been wounded in 2003 and was fully able to function by 2005—yet lingered on at the...

First, the good news. resident Joe Biden’s Veterans Administration (VA) budget request for Fiscal Year 2022 is $270 billion--a 10% increase over 2021 levels. Now, the bad news. Picking up where a failed Senate bill in 2019 left off, the budget’s language would amend Title 38 of the U.S. Code, a.k.a. Veterans’ Benefits, to limit veteran options on who may legally file disability and benefits claims on their behalf. It would hurt millions of veterans. Though well-intentioned, the last Congress introduced legislation which would criminalize providing such services without being accredited by the VA, thereby sharply reducing veteran claim options....

Biden admin says 'long COVID-19' could qualify as a disability under federal law Replay Video The Biden administration on Monday released new guidance on how to support those experiencing long-term symptoms of COVID-19 as part of a broader effort to recognize the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Justice rolled out guidance making clear that symptoms of “long COVID-19” could qualify as a disability under the federal civil rights law. The guidance makes clear that long COVID-19 is not automatically a disability and that an “individualized assessment” is necessary...

Just take a second or two to think about successful people with disabilities. How many names from the fields of politics, sports, music, business, science or from movies – dead or alive – come to mind? It’s an interesting question and I was curious to find out what would happen when the American public are asked whether they can name any successful people with disabilities, so I commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct a representative survey in February 2021. The survey’s respondents were asked to name up to three people. The survey found that 51 percent of Americans could not name...

A vanity post with comparisons of the USSA to the USSR via Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and the treatment of disabled Veterans by "family" "courts", an explanation of how disability payments are stolen, and the reasons 'courts' operate without (in addition to above) the law - for money; specifically the Federal government's direct subsidy payments made to court systems under Social Security Sub-title IV-D funding (which actually pays State courts multiples per dollar of support collected).

MDMA may mostly be known as an illicit party drug, but this psychoactive chemical looks to offer therapeutic applications far removed from the highs of the rave scene. In fact, MDMA-assisted therapy could soon become a legal and approved way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States. In the first phase III clinical trial for any psychedelic-assisted therapy, MDMA has shown more potential to help treat PTSD with therapy than possibly any other medicine we've got. After just three sessions, patients who were given MDMA during therapy were 35 percent less likely to meet the diagnosis for...

My dear fellow FReepers, could you please help me to find the best coverage but most economial Medigap plan? I have fixed income with Social Security Disability and have basic Medicare, but do not qualify for Medicaid due to my spouse's income (have tried multiple times to get on Medicaid). I've been shopping for a myriad of plans, but would like to see about the best one, Blue Cross Blue Shield--which I am about to further investigate. Thank you my beloved FRiends!

A New York City firefighter has been moonlighting as a stuntman — while also raking in a $136,684-a-year disability pension, The Post has learned. Firefighter John A. McGinty retired with the lucrative annual payout in 2016 after 25 years with the FDNY. But it turns out McGinty, 58, has been working for years as a professional movie stuntman, according to his own LinkedIn page. McGinty — who also goes by the stage name John Mack — says he is adept at fighting, driving stunts, falls below 30 feet and small fires, according to a profile on management site CMG Talent.

Repealing the payroll tax as proposed by President Donald Trump without putting in place a new source of funding for Social Security would mean disability payments would end in mid-2021 and payments to the elderly would stop in 2023, according to the program’s chief actuary.

The German Cabinet met on Wednesday to discuss the removal of terms like “mentally perverted” and “weak in the mind” from the criminal code, where they are used to refer to disabled people The government’s commissioner for people with disabilities, Jürgen Dusel, welcomed the possible change, saying such terms were “stigmatizing, discriminatory and dehumanizing.” “Terms like ‘mental perversion’ [seelische Abartigkeit] and ‘mentally weak’ [schwachsinnig] are simply crude,” he told DW. “People outside of legal and political circles often don’t know that these terms exist in the criminal code,” he added. Since his appointment to the office in May 2018, he...

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is working on a plan to tighten eligibility requirements for disability benefits, especially for older Americans, the latest step in a broader White House effort to shrink federal safety-net programs. The proposal being prepared by the Social Security Administration would revise eligibility for disability benefits based on age, education and work experience, according to a draft viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Those factors determined the eligibility of about 500,000 people in 2017, according to the latest available data. More than eight million people currently receive disability payments. The proposal aims to address major economic and demographic...

For many years, colleges and universities have observed the Americans with Disabilities Act by finding alternate ways for students with disabilities to meet course requirements. For example, a blind student might be accommodated by allowing a university representative to orally read the student questions from a written exam. A student with limited mobility might be allowed some extra time in getting from one class to another. More recently, many universities have expanded accommodations to cover conditions that might have been ignored in the recent past: today, students who can document Attention Deficit Disorder are routinely offered extra time in taking...

Long before President Donald Trump exposed media corruption by popularizing the term “fake news,” my family was subjected to a battle of deceptive reporting about my sister, Terri Schiavo. One-sided “journalism” continues today, as demonstrated by a recent Tampa Bay Times article titled, “Inside the Terri Schiavo case: Pinellas judge who decided her fate opens up,” by Leonora LaPeter Anton. Ms. Anton writes about Judge George Greer of Pinellas County Florida Circuit Court, who ruled that Terri’s estranged husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, could remove her food and water (via feeding tube). Greer’s decision was enforced on March 18,...

On 27 April, before he burst into a San Diego synagogue and opened fire, killing one worshipper and injuring three more, the gunman said goodbye to the community that radicalised him. “It’s been real dudes,” he posted on the far-right politics board, /pol/, on the image-posting site 8chan. “I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless.” The story was familiar. Six weeks earlier, a 28-year-old had killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before starting his attack, he, too, had posted on 8chan’s /pol/ board. “It’s been a...

Labor organizations will no longer be allowed to skim dues money from the checks of Medicaid patients under new rules adopted by the Trump administration. The Department of Health and Human Services's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services adopted new regulation that will prohibit states from siphoning money from caregiver reimbursements to third parties. The rule takes direct aim at state policies enacted to enrich union coffers. "State Medicaid programs are responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars are dedicated to providing healthcare services for low-income, vulnerable Americans and are not diverted in ways that do not comply with federal law,"...

As news circulated Tuesday that President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are eyeing a $2 trillion infrastructure spending package, the House Republican Study Committee introduced a budget proposal that recognizes that America’s $22 trillion—and rapidly growing—national debt is unsustainable, and that Congress must change course. “Preserving American Freedom,” the Republican Study Committee’s comprehensive fiscal 2020 budget proposal, would rein in Washington’s spending addiction by prioritizing core constitutional functions. By reducing inappropriate and wasteful spending and right-sizing the federal government, the committee’s proposal would balance the budget in six years and start...

Philadelphia mom, 44, who shelled out $25k on Arabian themed prom send-off for her son complete with camel and three dates is charged with fraud for collecting disability and faces 140 years behind bars Saudia Shuler, the mom who dropped $25,000 for her son's 2017 prom, has been charged with wire fraud, theft of government funds and Social Security fraud The 44-year-old was said to have applied for benefits, describing herself as disabled and unable to work, but continued working She even operated a restaurant called Country Cookin' - costing the government close to $37,000 Shuler could face a staggering...

The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place. The drop is so significant that the agency has revised its estimates of how long the program will continue to be financially secure. This month, the government announced that the program would not run out of money until 2032, four years later than its previous estimate last year. Two years ago,...

I have questions concerning short and long term disability, life insurance and employment. The questions will require a lot of set-up and will contain a lot of personal information. If you don't feel like reading to the end and providing your best guest as to serious answers, please don't feel pressured to stick around. I have cancer. Back in the fall of 2016, I was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer; by that time, the initial tumor was 14cm long, and 7cm in both height and width, and other tumors had spread to my femurs, pelvic bone and spine. During...