Author: fairyprincessjace

impotsiblelife:

Getting a diagnosis takes a long time, and that causes real problems for chronically ill patients. It can be harder to get accommodations at school and work without a doctor’s note. Getting disability benefits can be much harder or impossible depending upon where you live. Family and friends may not believe that you’re sick. An official diagnosis shouldn’t be this important, but since it is, the medical system needs to find a way to shorten the average wait times for diagnoses. 

captioning-action:

thefibrodiaries:

As disabled members of the lgbt community we should be celebrating marriage equality, right? but unfortunately us disabled people who rely on government support to survive risk losing everything and becoming totally financially reliant on our partners if we marry or even move in together.

sources: x x

Image is a Twitter thread. It begins with a tweet from Annie Segarra – @annieelainey. 

They are replying to @neonfiona.

It reads: “But also when we use “marriage equality” remember that we don’t really have full marriage equality until disabled people on government aid can get married without consequence of losing their needed aid/care.

Many disabled people have to choose between marrying the person they love or their basic survival needs. Guess which one hey are forced to choose?

Most Americans don’t even know it’s a thing but pretty sure it’s also a UK thing too, not sure abt other places but it’s likely.

The assumption is prety much if a disabled person gets married then their partner should be taking care of them.“

It breaks to a reply thread from Jonathan Hume – @IamMrJ.

It reads: “You: omg marriage Equality™¡!

Reality: Disabled people who cannot work and want to marry need to give up their indepent income and become entirely reliant on their partner, which is not only dangerous but puts us in further poverty unless we marry someone loaded.

Just to explain this in a little more detail since people have asked.

If a person claiming income-based ESA marries someone earning over £16k (iirc) a year, tey lose their income entirely.

If two non-disabled/can-work ect people marry, their incomes combine.

Thus if two people earning £20k married, their income wuld be £20k per person.

If an ESA claimant married someone earning £20k, the income would be £10k per person.

Granted that living costs don’t scale linearly, but the disabled partner is entirely reliant on their partner providing that £10k.

Note that after housing costs, the minimum income of a decent quality of life is £11k.

The system is built in such a way that it’s safer (both froman abuse and quality of live perspective) and financially more sensible for disabled people to not marry.

If a disabled person needs to leave their partner for whatever reason they will have no independent income.

The universal credit changes means it takes 6+ weeks to get paid when starting a new claim.

Non-disabled people don’t have to ask their partner to reduce their income-per-person by 50%. 

If you’re marrying someone on a good income then it’s inconsequential, but most of us won’t be.

And that’s why it’s unfair. The system makes us a financial burden.”