Response to @CT:

It makes me sick to see things like the story about the 97 year-old woman and her two disabled sons having to live in their vehicle. It makes me sicker to know that they are not alone. The rules of the agencies that administer help for citizens in distress force people to divest themselves of everything they own of any value before they will help them. The waiting lists are endless.

Even the competing agencies take advantage of each other when they get a chance. For instance, I’ve never received a whole COLA. On the day when the notice of a coming annual increase arrives, so does another notice from the agency that administers the food stamp program in Washington. They explain that since I’ve come into this windfall of an increase, they’ll need to deduct forty percent of it from my monthly food stamp allotment. It’s the rules, they say. I’ve never gotten more than sixty percent of an increase in the years I’ve been on SSI.

It’s just an example of the things they can and do get by with when they have us down and helpless. The only suggestion I can give to those poor folks living in their car is to find another state nearby that still recognizes that helpless people need assistance. The poor and helpless do not matter to California’s leadership.

anaman51 writes:
“The reason we don’t riot is the same reason they feel safe ripping off the poor, the elderly and the disabled—-it’s hard to riot from a bed. It’s hard to riot when your age has surpassed your ability to march and carry a sign. It’s hard to riot from a nursing home.”

Woman, 97, has a front seat to homelessness
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bessie16-2009oct16,0,3547096,full.story

So ... the Pentagon can pay $400/gallon for gasoline in Afghanistan, and Oblabla—simpering about wielding a “socialist mop” while He picks up a quick $3 million in San Francisco, then zipping off to play “Points of Light” with the Bushes in Houston—can’t seem to mention the poor at ALL. But He can strike the pose that His insurance-“reform” scam—which would make things WORSE for the poor—must be “deficit-neutral”.

Cutting the COLA for the very poor is amazing—the “no inflation” claim doesn’t hold, at the lower end of the grocery chain.

I dunno just who’s going to DO the rioting—the people’s supposed representatives in Congress are in a good position to put an end to any or all of this crap—but it looks like the ascension of the Republican-lite Prince of Peace ain’t gonna do the trick.

I’m guessing the REAL reason to forego the COLA is some conservatives’ scheme to discourage laid off old-timers from starting up Social Security withdrawals.       
    With the economy taking a swirly and unemployment in climbing double digits, older workers who have been laid off have also run out of unemployment and are tempted to take the payments early.  Stats show that older workers have been the first to be laid off and the last to be hired back.  Older workers tend to be at the top of their earning years and accumulated benefits, and therefore ripe for elimination, especially since defined benefit pensions have been mostly eliminated.  Companies get a lot of bang by swapping in newbies and offshore types in place of old timers - lower benefit packages, fewer “lost” weeks of vacation and sick time, lower wages at the start, fewer implied promises, lower health care costs, and an air of kiss-my-foot-for-your-job servitude. 
  By the way, the trend has no relationship with party affiliation.  Like the Corleones’ methods, “...It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”

anama51, what is really unfortunate for Medicaid recipients is that state governments control the amounts, and what they will pay for in many cases. Here in Hawaii, they have been strip mining Medicaid for every cent . We have lots of seniors, so it is the kids on Medicaid who are really getting hammered. It is difficult to riot from a nursing home, but even more so in a stroller, with a disorganized, under-educated parent pushing it.

The cut back on meds is affecting Medicare too. I read that any prescription drug that can be maybe replaced by an over-the-counter one will no longer be covered. It specifically mentioned the acid-reflux and anti-acid medications that were covered before.

In Hawaii, I haven’t noticed any drop in the cost of living [about the highest in the country]. Gasoline is well over $3 a gallon [3.30 the last time I filled up my car]. Power rates are the highest in the country also. My latest bill figures out at 34.2 cents a kwh. I had to do the math, because they don’t give us a per kw rate. We get charges like ‘non-fuel energy’ and ‘base fuel energy’ and an ‘energy cost adjustment’ instead, which vary on the phase of the moon.

Groceries are more expensive, because a lot of things are shipped from the mainland. The farmers’s markets are some cheaper, but the pound of beans that was a dollar last year, is $2 now. Of course the farmer is getting hammered on his costs - once again, he pays a premium for shipping and energy etc.

I’m doing ok tho. I quit using my dryer, and hang my cloths out all the time. I am retired, so I can do laundry when the sun shines rather than just on the weekend. I have a lot of fruit trees, and feast on it. Whatever is is in season is the choice of the day. The biggest problem is the price of dog, cat, and chicken feed. It hasn’t quite doubled - but almost. I don’t seem too successful and getting the crew to eat less either.

I’m not going to complain. There are many people doing a hell of a lot worse. At least I don’t have to pay for heat, or worry about winter clothes. I do wonder what the really poor people eat now days tho, with dried beans $2 a pound, onions almost a buck, and the same for potatoes. No wonder they buy the Big Mac and call it dinner!

I figured since it was germane to the conversation, I’d share this with you. A few minutes ago I got a call from the nurse in my doctor’s office. She was letting me know that the state Medicaid office has just declared another of my medications to be out of bounds—-this one is for chronic GERD.

My stomach produces about twice as much acid as it should, and when I lie down, the acid backs up into my throat, full strength, and eats away the flesh leaving an open burn wound. I guess I didn’t need this one anymore, even though I’ve had to take it for the last seven years.

This is what it’s like when you’re not in control of your own life anymore, and have to depend on some damned government agency to keep you alive. When I stated that they don’t care, I wasn’t kidding. They just did this not only to me, but to every GERD sufferer on Medicaid in the whole state. This one costs more than I can cover, so I’m out of luck. My doctor is madder than a wet cat, but the state doesn’t care. The disabled don’t matter.

In response to @CT:

The reason we don’t riot is the same reason they feel safe ripping off the poor, the elderly and the disabled—-it’s hard to riot from a bed. It’s hard to riot when your age has surpassed your ability to march and carry a sign. It’s hard to riot from a nursing home.

It’s easy to steal from us, and since we can’t afford to hire professional liars and Beltway pimps to pay off legislators, we have no voice other than the that of the few organizations that have formed over the recent years to fight back against treatment like this. Those organizations are frequently small and always underfunded, since few people give serious thought to getting old and infirm. As all young, healthy people know, those kinds of things just can’t happen to them!

One of the first things a newly disabled person discovers is that they no longer matter, unless they have a lot of money. It doesn’t matter how many years you worked, or if you were born with your disability—-you’re the son of a bitch who’s sucking money out of the working man’s paycheck. This is one of the reasons the Republicans get so little blowback from the voting public when they strip a social agency of its funding. No one cares.

anaman51 writes:
“A few years back my state legislators decided Medicaid was squandering far too much prescription money on what they see as a worthless segment of the population, so they decided to step in. They began to determine which prescription drugs would be paid for by Medicaid and which ones we really didn’t need. Apparently our doctors weren’t up to making that kind of important fiscal decision, being caught up in trying to keep us healthy instead. They cut a number of drugs from the list that would be covered, including one of mine. I now have to buy it out of my own pocket, using the pennies left over after the bills are paid.”

Kay Johnson writes:
“No more money for Grandma through her Social Security, but Congress raises their own staff budgets by 8%.”

Maybe Congress is among those “too big to fail” . . .
There’s plenty of money for corporate bonuses, plenty for the violent occupation of half the Middle East, plenty to make war on Fox News.

As for Medicaid, the prince of peace and His quislings in the Congress mean to make sure that’s the ONLY health care the poor EVER get: lest Oblabla “fail” to “win” on hahaha reforming the health care system, these geniuses are CUTTING Medicaid by billions, AND mandating more of the poor INTO it.

Why is nobody rioting?

Wish my S.S. was for the average, I would be better off. Just read in today’s news that food prices are expected to go up in 2010 and it is always much more that the figures that they tell the “little people”. Their 2-5% is more in the real world closer to 20-18% higher. Just keep a few of your grocery receipts and compare them from time to time. Once the prices go up they rarely go back down.

That’s a pretty good average-sized monthly check, from where I’m sitting. I don’t get the average check. I get to live on $674 a month. Being fully disabled (hurt on the job in ‘91)I can’t go get a part-time job to make ends meet. In fact, the ends haven’t even seen each other for about twenty years now.

For these well-off lawmakers to decide we’ve got enough to live on is a pretty dark piece of humor. A few years back my state legislators decided Medicaid was squandering far too much prescription money on what they see as a worthless segment of the population, so they decided to step in. They began to determine which prescription drugs would be paid for by Medicaid and which ones we really didn’t need. Apparently our doctors weren’t up to making that kind of important fiscal decision, being caught up in trying to keep us healthy instead. They cut a number of drugs from the list that would be covered, including one of mine. I now have to buy it out of my own pocket, using the pennies left over after the bills are paid. Those of us who must depend on the government to keep us alive and well are used to having our funding cut—-we just spent eight years with the Republican Machine in charge. They robbed us of every social services benefit they could manage to strip of funding, and handed the proceeds to the richest one percent of Americans.

For we who wait on public funding, there is no margin of safety. I’m here to tell you that there’s a huge difference between existing and living. There are no options for many of us but to depend on our government. When it lets us down, we’ve nowhere to turn. I want to thank Ron DeFazio, Democrat from Oregon, for spearheading this bonus amount for us, and President Obama for seconding it. I expect now we’ll hear from the haters.

No more money for Grandma through her Social Security, but Congress raises their own staff budgets by 8%.

Oh, but priorities—I get it!

Shame on our elected officials! And, shame on Obama!