If this person is capable of working, then why shouldn’t he?
This has to be a lead-up to a story on how ObamaCare would help this guy...
It sounds like he is ready to brave the world on his own, and I bet a lot of people would be willing to help him help himself.
Patient I’ve got a triple fracture of the right leg, dislocated collar bone and multiple head injuries, so I do most of the heavy work, like helping the surgeon.
Interviewer’s Voice What does that involve?
Patient Well, at the moment we’re building him a holiday home.
Interviewer’s Voice What about the nurses?
Patient Well, I don’t know about them. They’re not allowed to mix with the patients.
Interviewer’s Voice Do all the patients work?
Patient No, no, the ones that are really ill do sport.
Yet my ex-girlfriend’s been living off the public dole for over a year and a half, and hasn’t bothered looking for a job.
I know a few severely physically disabled people who not just hold down physically demanding jobs, but also excel at them.
For instance, a one-armed tree trimming owner/operator, also missing half of his remaining hand, who runs chainsaws, machinery, drags brush and outworks all of his young employees.
Another, a midget with bad hips who can barely walk, and blind in one eye, that is the best damn small engine repairman around. We drive 80 miles to have him work on our stuff.
Why isn’t he working?
My dad lost an arm in WWII and broke his back twice.........never ever was without work.
Losing a leg.......again why isn’t he working?
” . . . get a job, as benefits will stop”
And why shouldn’t they stop?
I believe it was Mark Twain who said something to the effect that of all our human drives, laziness was the strongest.
Some other brilliant thinker has also pointed out that the most addictive substance known to man is a monthly check from the government. I would add that these checks are also the most devastating, robbing the addict of both their motivation and their self esteem.
Either this person is not really trying to find work, or he has something else going on. Either way, it is certainly not my concern, worthy of yet more taxes taken from me at the point of a gun. If the person who wrote the article or those who read it feel really sorry for this fellow they are certainly free to support him with their OWN money if they want: But you know they won’t.
Then he would get all the free government money he wants without having to work for it!
A very good friend of mine who has since passed on lost his leg when he was about 17.
He got really drunk and passed out in the backseat of a car overnight while in a position that cut off his circulation. They had to take his leg off, and even with the prosthesis he could still work harder as a roofer than any two guys on the crew. He worked 60 to 70 hours a week and never complained once to anyone I knew.
The only time he really had a problem that I saw was when he was driving a friends Harley his leg fell off and he had to set the bike down, he stopped and it leaned the wrong way on him.
Handicaps are what you make of them.
Does his injury prevent him from holding a desk job?Not to sound mean, but he probably could work if he wanted to. One of the top programmers at one of my former shops suffered from a spinal injury that had rendered him a paraplegic. He was wheelchair-bound but showed up every day and loved the work. Maybe this fellow should get some retraining rather than another year of payments.
Whether or not this guy could find a job in this economy is another matter.
Several handicapped people work in my building. A few of them are in wheelchairs. They are bright and articulate.
Get a job.
I’m sure most of the FReepers here have seen the documentary on the girl with no bottom half of her body who enjoyed being an auto mechanic and had a child, to boot. She moved across the floor/road/sidewalk on a roller board and even drove a hot custom Mustang in drag races using hand controls. Handicapped? She just spoke as though she worked around the issue.
I know too many young to 40 year olds who are perfectly capable of working but are so comfortable on their free income, food stamps (they now get for food than I can spend), TOTALLY free Medicaid - no co-pay, no deduction from from monthly check, no $ out of their pocket, whatever...and they have NO physical disability at all. (Bi-Polar is a real catch all. It can't be proven by any tests. All you need to know is the right answers on the query - and boom - you're home free forever.
There should be a time limitation to these cases. Say, if you're an alcoholic/druggie - you have to attend AA or rehab and work at least part time. You have one year and you're on your own.
My youngest son, at 21, had a lethal form of bone cancer - in his upper arm. AT the time, he was manager of a restaurant.
He went through the cut-burn-poison hell of today's treatments. He couldn't even get any disability THEN.
They told him he likely wouldn't make it, that he'd loose the arm, that he'd likely never have children.
He laughed in their faces.
His arm is a mess of metal and disfigured and always in danger of breaking - The only job he could get when strong enough again was as a dishwasher in a 400-seat restaurant in Florida - with no insurance, even if excluding for cancer.
For the past 15 years, he has been head chef/kitchen manager and he has 3 beautiful children...
This guy in the story - you have two good arms and a head - I don't know about the brain. But he - and millions of others capable of working - need to stop sucking at the teat of tax payers money.
That, Tort reform and elimination of fraud would better solve the money problems of S.C./Medicare/Medicaid. The Socialists know this. But that wouldn't give them control over us. He is a classic example of what the welfare state to often sucks people into - dependency and ‘pity me.
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I have a brother who is very smart and friendly. He is also a double-amputee (both legs). He gets government assistance (has for many years). I think it is wrong to keep extending these benefits to him. He needs to get a job.
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liability
I had 2 spinal surgeries in the last 2 years. I am unemployed, going to school for vocational rehab because I qualified and am down to my last 6 months of unemployment compensation insurance payments to me.
IF I try to lift something heavy for work, I am guaranteed that I will speed up the final injury that will send me back for my 3rd surgery, a fusion, which they say I dont need now. I am legally limited to 35 pounds lifting, 75 pounds pushing or pulling. I am refused any repetitive lifting.
This guy with his leg: What are his limits? To read that a one legged man is roofing; it is clear he did not lose his leg at work for he is working to his known limits, not his legal limits.
I can collect disability in a lump sum and take my chances on injuries, but I also lose any future coverage for surgery that I was assured I would need at a later, unknown, date.
And, something else, not everyone works well in an office, that is an easy answer to just blurt out, but try it! The transition from mechanic to Engineer was tough, so tough I decided to go back to being a mechanic again...and that's when I got hurt!
So, anyways, I am going to Electrical Engineering this time, the combination of Mechanical Engineerng and Electrical Engineering, AS degrees, should make me more employable. Lots of experience, lots of training, been around the block a few times...too bad there aint no jobs in Connecticut!
If this loser has any brains, ambition or talent at all, he could learn to write programs for, say, the iPhone, and sell his work at the Apple AppStore. Mobility is not required for that -- aside from the will to get up off his lazy parasitic butt, and figure out a way to make himself useful.
He gets zero sympathy from me.