Sauce for the Gander

Yep, it does. I've been applying since last January. The only answer is lawyers. Mine will take 20% of my first check, but still having 80% is better then having nothing. I'll put it all into nills and hope repairs - we need a furnace that works.

This is true, in my experience- it took roughly that long for us for our daughter.

And the instructions were obscure and often self-contradictory; I am convinced the goal is to drive people who need it into giving up. And- we were privileged in this; we're middle-class, educated, married, and white! It's gotta be worse for most people- especially when they're adults, and don't have anyone else to navigate it FOR them.

Successfully navigating the disability process would be pretty much impossible for most people that need the help.

But it's so "efficient"! meaning, that obvious and immediate costs go down, while long-term dollar and human costs skyrocket- but no one's tracking those.

This is why MA, in the wake of our "reform" meaning mandatory health insirance purchasing, is pursuing a Plan where doctors are paid $X per year per patient, no matter what care they may or may not need. Obviously, the ideal situation here would be to have a ton of patients and provide no care at all. I'm not saying this exactly will happen- but it DOES mean they are planning on paying doctors to deny care (rather than fobbing that off onto the insurance companies as they mostly do now). I experiences this with my broken wrist, when my primary health physician fought tooth and nail to deny me the physical therapy I needed to get back to WORK, because part of that cost would have come out of her take.