Report: Addicts Need Disability Income

Newsday.com ^ | July 21, 2003 | Laura Meckler (AP writer)

[Tamzee]

WASHINGTON -- One in three drug addicts and alcoholics removed from a federal disability program in 1996 failed to make up even half the money they once got from the government, researchers reported Monday.

The Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, program gives cash benefits to very poor, disabled Americans. Until 1996, a program called Drug Addiction and Alcohol allowed very poor alcoholics and drug addicts about $500 a month from SSI, plus health benefits through Medicaid, if they were receiving treatment for their addictions.

The program started small but grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s as courts ruled that most anyone with the addictions could qualify for help. Almost 170,000 were enrolled nationally in 1996, when Congress passed and President Clinton signed major legislation that overhauled the nation's welfare system.

"There was widespread observation in Congress that when benefits were terminated, people would go back to work," said Jim Baumohl of Bryn Mawr College, one of the researchers who examined the impact of the policy change. The research was published Monday in the online journal Contemporary Drug Problems.

Researchers interviewed nearly 2,000 people in nine cities and counties who had been receiving benefits from the program about their lives after they were removed from SSI. Interviews were conducted in five waves over two years to measure the impact of the changes over time.

They found 37 percent of people who lost benefits requalified for SSI by showing they had other disabilities. Another 27 percent lost their benefits but replaced at least half the money through other welfare programs, wages or help from family and friends. Thirty-one percent lost benefits and could replace less than half the money.

Those who lost benefits but failed to replace them were 60 to 70 percent more likely to suffer material hardships, according to research led by Jean Norris of the Public Health Institute, a California-based research group.

It is not surprising that people who lose benefits will have a harder time making it, she said: "To many of us it did seem completely obvious that this might happen."

(Newsday articles must be excerpted; the remainder of the article is at the above link)

[Tamzee]

Perhaps these folks will also feel compelled to move to Canada with the disillusioned liberals?

[dennisw]

This would go great with drug legalization efforts by our liberdopians.

You shoot heroin? Here's your monthly SS check and your medicaid card.

[MediaMole]

Reminds me of the case where the drug addict claimed he couldn't pursue his career because of his addiction. What was his career asked the SSI examiner?

Car thief.

[ambrose]

Addicts need disability income like they need a hole in the head.

[MayDay72]

"This would go great with drug legalization efforts by our liberdopians. You shoot heroin? Here's your monthly SS check and your medicaid card." -dennisw

...Quite the opposite...As someone who you might label a "liberdopian" my opinion would be "...YOU shoot heroin...then YOU must live with the [financial, moral, spiritual, mental, physical, etc.] consequences of YOUR actions..."

[dennisw]

Do you still favor drug legalization (heroin, crack, methedrine, etc.), thus making hard drugs cheaper, more widely available, if addicts are allowed to get Medicaid and Social Security payments this article describes?

[MayDay72]

"Do you still favor drug legalization (heroin, crack, methedrine, etc.), thus making hard drugs cheaper, more widely available, if addicts are allowed to get Medicaid and Social Security payments this article describes?" -dennisw

...Not sure if I favor drug legalization...I don't support Social Security, etc. in their current [bloated/ bureaucratic] form...And I definitely don't favor giving taxpayer/state funds to individuals for knowingly engaging idiotic or immoral behavior...Whether the drug use is illegal or not my opinion is the same: If there are negative consequences to you actions then you are solely responsibly for the costs...Not me or Uncle Sam...

[Thorondir]

This is wonderful. Who can complain? Everything is good and happy blah blah yadda yadda. PC is good; those who criticize are bad. Can't we all just get along? Give them their drugs and more of our money, yadda yadda happy happy joy joy!

[tdadams]

Don't be another brainless twit who presumes to speak for libertarians. If you knew anything at all about libertarians, you'd know that getting government handouts is the last thing libertarians would support.

How much credibility are you willing to give up in your effort to denigrate libertarians? And what do you have against liberty anyway?

[R. Scott]

I stayed in the Army for over twenty years, and retired disabled. Because I was career military, my VA payment is deducted from my Army retirement.
I guess I should have learned to be a drug addict instead.

[Jimmy Valentine]

SSI was a rank pillage of public money. It enrenched people on the welfare rolls. Some people in rural Louisiana referred to SSI as "crazy checks".

[FITZ]

This would go great with drug legalization efforts by our liberdopians.

I never see any of them raise the issue of how much taxpayer dollars goes into the support of drug addicts. It makes me wonder how "libertarian" they really are ----to be consistent, they should show equal or more outrage over how much money is being confiscated from hard working people to pay for the drug losers and their families.

[FITZ]

I'm for liberty ----but show me one single post ever made by a so-called libertarian about their outrage over how much taxpayer dollars are wasted on drug addicts. It would seem if they were sincere, they'd be guaranteeing tax money would be ended to drug addicts before they demanded the legalization of drugs. It seems most only want the legalization.

[wcgo2]

Wait-do i actually understand this article? I´ve read it 15 times and still can´t beleive that people would EVER give disability insurance to DRUG ADDICTS, along with MONEY. That´s not a disability, that´s like beating yourself with a club until you bleed, and then demanding that the state pay for the recuperation. I agree that they should be state-recuperated, but drug addicts need to be shown tough love. There is no excuse for drug addiction, and the second you start, you endager not only your immediate family, but your friends, neighbors, etc. Drug addicts need to be Aressted for possesion and use of an illegal substance. Then placed in hi-security rehab by the state. And when they´re over it, that´s when we release them.

[NMFXSTC]

Bro, we did it all wrong...serve a country that abandoned us when we became disabled...thanks, America!

[csvset]

Hell, I know alcoholics and addicts that have lost family, homes, jobs, and just about about every material wealth imagined due to their addictions, yet they are content with having lost it; having gained sobriety.

I don't recall one of them saying that their sobriety was contingent on a government check.

[Eagle Eye]

I'm for liberty ----but show me one single post ever made by a so-called libertarian about their outrage over how much taxpayer dollars are wasted on drug addicts.

I cannot believe your willing blindness! Nearly every WoD thread has someone expressing some degree of opposition to the government paying for treatment or welfare. If you don't see them it is because you don't want to. It is either ignorance or dishonesty to assert that L/libertarians support or passively accept the idea of government payment of this type.

If nothing else, consider this your one post.

[dennisw]

Then my question for you libertarians is this:

"Do you still favor drug legalization (heroin, crack, methedrine, etc.), thus making hard drugs cheaper, more widely available, if addicts are allowed to get Medicaid and Social Security payments this article describes?"

[dennisw]

I must be fair to the libertarians. They have an ice cream castle in the sky construct of how they would like things to be. Open borders in one (It's in the Libertarian Party platform). Legalizing all drugs is another and they always say that with legalization they want no government money going to the addicts and wrecked families this creates. They can die in the streets and alleyways. Some of the crueler FreeRepublic libertarians relish this idea

[Eagle Eye]

Have you quit beating your wife yet?

Do you favor keeping SSI and Medicaid intact if those substances are kept illegal?