Determinations Are Unfair

Ocean County Observer

September 19, 1983

The revolt against the revolting disability rules imposed by the Reagan administration has started. The game works like this. A state agency (in New Jersey the State Department of Labor) is empowered to make a determination of disability based on reports of doctors. The determination purposely does not take into consideration the opinions and recommendations of the examining doctor. The Federal Social Security Agency makes a disability Decision on the basis of the Determination made by the labor department.

But a number of states, deluged by complaints and visibly shaken by injustice that has been done and the pain and hardship inflicted by these stringent regulations have begun to fight back. The governors of New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Arkansas, West Virginia and others have begun to challenge the harsh restrictive interpretations of the law by Reaganites.

It has been obvious since Reagan took office that the new regulations have hurt people immeasurably; and those hurt the most were of course the disabled, the most vulnerable; those unable to defend themselves because of their illness or injury. The process has been most unfair; a government attempt to save money, flailing indiscriminately with a fiscal stick to beat down the helpless.

Doctors and administrative staff members alike at the New Jersey Department of Labor Division of Disability Claims have told me that they hate what they are doing but fear reprisals if they do otherwise. Yet they do harm to fellow human beings; and the ability to orchestrate harmful programs through epigones who follow blindly is the stuff of bureaucratic despotism.

Take the case of RM – 62 years old, a hard worker his entire life, a union man addicted to hard work. He has had during the last three years radical surgery for cancer of the prostate that left him with some urinary incontinence. Subsequent to the difficult surgery he developed coronary artery disease and is unable to exert himself without suffering chest pain. His records were examined by the labor department in this Garden State of ours after which he received a letter telling him he can return to his usual work. All of his examining doctors believe otherwise. If he returns to his prior work he will suffer a heart attack.

Now after the fact, after the disenfranchising about 400,000 persons, social security officials (according to the New York Times of 9/12/83) believe that they have over-reacted, that the process should have been more humane, that errors were made.

An American citizen with disabling disease, unable to fend for himself, shot down from the disability roles by strangers in government clothing might just as well have been a passenger on KAL 007 (shot down by the Soviets).

Governor Hunt of North Carolina was so upset that he declared a moratorium on disability determinations in his state, and in New York the state commissioner of social services accused the federal government of not meeting its legal and moral obligations.

It is time now for New Jersey to join ranks with the states resisting the federal anti-disability steam roller. Governor Kean can earn the prayers of thousands by acting now. All he has to do to save lives. Instead of money is to declare a moratorium on disability determinations in this state.

Come on Governor, let’s do it now before it is too late for some defenseless soul. It doesn’t even take courage to act in behalf of the disabled – just compassion.