I think you know the rea$ons why, dear readers:
"A legacy of unintended side effects" by Patricia Wen, Globe Staff / December 12, 2010
Geneva Fielding, a single mother since age 16, has struggled to raise her three energetic boys in the housing projects of Roxbury. Nothing has come easily, least of all money.
Even so, she resisted some years back when neighbors told her about a federal program called SSI that could pay her thousands of dollars a year. The benefit was a lot like welfare, better in many ways, but it came with a catch: To qualify, a child had to be disabled. And if the disability was mental or behavioral — something like ADHD — the child pretty much had to be taking psychotropic drugs.
I am of the opinion that NO CHILD should be TAKING PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS!
Fielding never liked the sound of that. She had long believed too many children take such medications, and she avoided them, even as clinicians were putting names to her boys’ troubles: oppositional defiant disorder, depression, ADHD. But then, as bills mounted, friends nudged her about SSI: “Go try.’’
Eventually she did, putting in applications for her two older sons. Neither was on medications; both were rejected. Then last year, school officials persuaded her to let her 10-year-old try a drug for his impulsiveness. Within weeks, his SSI application was approved.
The school just looking out for the kids(?)!
“To get the check,’’ Fielding, 34, has concluded with regret, “you’ve got to medicate the child.’’
There is nothing illegal about what Fielding did — and a lot that is perhaps understandable for a mother in her plight. But her worries and her experience capture, in one case, how this little-scrutinized $10 billion federal disability program has gone seriously astray, becoming an alternative welfare system with troubling built-in incentives that risk harm to children.
Hey, we send them off to war over the most outrageous lies....
A Globe investigation has found that this Supplemental Security Income program — created by Congress primarily to aid indigent children with severe physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and blindness — now largely serves children with relatively common mental, learning, and behavioral disorders such as ADHD. It has also created, for many needy parents, a financial motive to seek prescriptions for powerful drugs for their children.
Related: The End of Riley
And once a family gets on SSI, it can be very hard to let go. The attraction of up to $700 a month in payments, and the near-automatic Medicaid coverage that comes with SSI approval, leads some families to count on a child’s remaining classified as disabled, even as his or her condition may be improving. It also leads many teenage beneficiaries to avoid steps — like taking a job — that might jeopardize the disability check....
--more--"
"Alfonso receives $700 in monthly cash benefits, plus free government-paid medical coverage.
But YOU CAN NOT HAVE THAT, AmeriKan taxpayer!
Roman said her relatives told her she can pretty much count on the disability checks for Alfonso, now 5, to keep arriving in the mailbox for the rest of his childhood....
And the drug companies can count on sales!
--more--"
Too bad they were not bankers.
Related: Teenagers in SSI program face a cruel dilemma
Globe Editorial Revamp SSI to help caregivers while discouraging abuses
Congressman asks hearings on SSI benefits for youth
Just wanted you to see the agenda-pushing in action.
Of course, nothing ever changes despite these Globe exposes.
Also see: Mass. aims to cut drug overuse for dementia
The Massachusetts Model: Nursing Home Will Make You Nuts
Slow Saturday Special: Boston Globe Old Folks Home
They got you coming and going, huh?
