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The Americans With Disabilities Act, passed by a Democratic Congress with support from Republican Senate leader Bob Dole and signed by President George H.W. Bush, is widely regarded as a major bipartisan achievement, in the same rarefied category of near-universally admired legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain both proclaimed their support for the continuing enforcement of the ADA, which gives civil-rights protections to people with disabilities and guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in places of public accommodation and government services.
The real reason the disabled stay unemployed is the lack of private and public employers' health insurance policies to match the expensive needs of disabled persons.
None come close to providing the benefits, needed by many disabled persons, that are available from medicaid/medicare, which are lost when the disabled person takes a productive job.
I can tell you the number one reason I don't get hired, and I imagine this is true of many other disabled workers. Put simply, employers just don't think the disabled candidate can do the job. Even if the disabled person is a good self-advocate, and explains to the employer what they can do, most employers just can't shake the feeling that the disabled candidate will cost more to accommodate, might not do the job as well, etc.
The other thing is that the ADA makes disabled workers potential lawsuits. People are afraid to hire the disabled because if they fire them later down the road, they might get sued for discrimination.
And another reason is that many disabled people don't believe in themselves. Many disabled people actually do thing that their disability means that they can't do anything in life.
On the flip side, there are disabled people who do know what they can do, but they'd rather live in the comfort of receiving SSI and having their family support them the rest of the way.
I think there needs to be education from all sides. Both employers and the disabled need to understand what they can and can't do. They need to understand which limitations are real and which limitations are just psychological.
I think all of this could be solved if SSI was only offered after a reasonable attempt of employment and providing accommodations. And I'm not just talking having some paper or someone call to say "X has been job searching." I think the government should try to place the disabled in jobs and provide their accommodations before giving them SSI. (I know they have services like vocational rehab, but it's a joke. Voc. rehab takes so long to get back to you that most employers give up. This happened to me twice this past year. I needed a special program to be able to do the job and by the time voc. rehab got back to me, my potential employer already went on to find greener pastures.) That would solve the issue that companies don't want to cover the cost of accommodations. It would also boost the economy because more of the disabled people who aren't working that could be would be working now.
The matter of fact is that most of us can work, we just don't think we can or we'd rather not. Disabled people who really can't work are the minority, and I think SSI and other services should be reserved for those who have tried or who really can't work in the truest sense, because there are no accommodations for them.
Ergohead, I think you also make an excellent point. Most medical policies only cover primary care, but disabled people often have a long list of secondary and tertiary physicians that they need to visit on a regular basis. Many disabled people also have a long list of expensive medications, many of which are not always covered by insurance. If insurance policies can change to cover what's needed the most (i.e. regular visits to a specialist instead of annual physicals, medications that need refills instead of one-time antibiotics, etc.) then that would make a huge difference.
Last edited by nimchimpsky; 08-06-2010 at 10:45 AM..
I can tell you the number one reason I don't get hired, and I imagine this is true of many other disabled workers. Put simply, employers just don't think the disabled candidate can do the job. Even if the disabled person is a good self-advocate, and explains to the employer what they can do, most employers just can't shake the feeling that the disabled candidate will cost more to accommodate, might not do the job as well, etc.
The other thing is that the ADA makes disabled workers potential lawsuits. People are afraid to hire the disabled because if they fire them later down the road, they might get sued for discrimination.
And another reason is that many disabled people don't believe in themselves. Many disabled people actually do thing that their disability means that they can't do anything in life.
On the flip side, there are disabled people who do know what they can do, but they'd rather live in the comfort of receiving SSI and having their family support them the rest of the way.
I think there needs to be education from all sides. Both employers and the disabled need to understand what they can and can't do. They need to understand which limitations are real and which limitations are just psychological.
I think all of this could be solved if SSI was only offered after a reasonable attempt of employment and providing accommodations. And I'm not just talking having some paper or someone call to say "X has been job searching." I think the government should try to place the disabled in jobs and provide their accommodations before giving them SSI. (I know they have services like vocational rehab, but it's a joke. Voc. rehab takes so long to get back to you that most employers give up. This happened to me twice this past year. I needed a special program to be able to do the job and by the time voc. rehab got back to me, my potential employer already went on to find greener pastures.) That would solve the issue that companies don't want to cover the cost of accommodations. It would also boost the economy because more of the disabled people who aren't working that could be would be working now.
The matter of fact is that most of us can work, we just don't think we can or we'd rather not. Disabled people who really can't work are the minority, and I think SSI and other services should be reserved for those who have tried or who really can't work in the truest sense, because there are no accommodations for them.
Ergohead, I think you also make an excellent point. Most medical policies only cover primary care, but disabled people often have a long list of secondary and tertiary physicians that they need to visit on a regular basis. Many disabled people also have a long list of expensive medications, many of which are not always covered by insurance. If insurance policies can change to cover what's needed the most (i.e. regular visits to a specialist instead of annual physicals, medications that need refills instead of one-time antibiotics, etc.) then that would make a huge difference.
well said. having worked at places that hired the disabled, i can tell you that they in fact more often do their jobs as well if not better than non disabled people doing the same job.
That doesn't surprise me. The second I start working I will work as hard as I can because I will be so happy to actually have a job that I'll do anything to keep it.
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