Sunday, July 9, 2006

Let's try again

My latest appeal of the latest denial of disability benefits has been filed, on grounds that:

1) the judge didn't have a doctor there, even after being ordered to  

2) the judge didn't address the information from friends, even being ordered to consider their first-hand observations

3) the judge mis-stated both my testimony and the doctors' conclusions. 

Personally, I would like the judge to show me any testimony or document showing that I am currently married.  He says that I went out with my husband; the way I read that day's notes, my handyman drove me somewhere that he also wanted to go.  But I guess if the judge says it's my husband, the Court of Appeal is supposed to conclude I'm not desperate for the benefits to pay my bills, since I'm choosing stay at home with the blessing of my husband who supports me so I don't have to work.  I didn't even have that luxury when I had a husband!

The judge's whole decision was based on misstatements of facts, because there ARE no facts showing that I can work full-time.  There are a lot of facts that show I can't, but those facts are dismissed by the judge as "exaggeration", no matter what source they come from.  Even one of the doctors hired to say I could return to work with no problems made it clear that I had been allowed to deteriorate so far without appropriate treatment that I would never work full-time again.  The judge also read that report to say that I could work full-time if I'd just get off my lazy butt and stop faking.

I'm told this judge has never granted benefits to anyone under age 55 for any reason.  Therefore, every one of the hundreds of cases he rules on each year needs to be appealed.  Rough calculations, these unnecessary appeals are costing you, the taxpayer, half a million dollars a year for just this judge alone.  And there are others like him.

Does anyone have the connections to start a Congressional inquiry into judges who waste far more taxpayer money on forcing unnecessary appeals than would be spent to grant all these people their Disability benefits?

What he doesn't realize is that if my goal were to get government money for doing nothing, I could have accomplished it in 9 months, with a one-night stand.  No judge or doctor has to approve your application for welfare -- just show up at the office with a baby and a birth certificate.  And, frankly, I'd get more money and better medical care if I'd taken that route.  Instead, six years later, I'm still fighting for the benefits that I'm legally entitled to, that doctors say I am entitled to, from a judge who claims the doctors said no such thing, and who, by now, has cost the taxpayers more for repeated unnecessary appeals than I'll get when I finally get the check.

No comments: