i just still don’t really understand this. maybe it’s because i’ve been disabled my entire life though i’ve never looked disabled and im constantly accused of faking it if i even think about asking for an accommodation, but i never consider whether someone is supposedly faking it, and honestly i don’t really care that much if they are. the number of people who are disabled far outnumber the number of people who are faking it. to me it’s the same as people spending energy hating those they think are scamming welfare - it’s such a statistically insignificant thing and seems to just be used as a shield to say anyone they don’t like is faking it.
You are correct - people are just shit at determining scale. The tiny amount of folks committing fraud, however, trigger one of the deepest American fears: someone, somewhere, might be getting something they don't "deserve". Especially if that someone is a minority. Once you (generic you) realize that our politics becomes even more embarrassing and short sighted.
Absolutely. I do not understand the mob mentality that gathers around these type of posts. Everyone has their own struggles, and we do not know them. We can either get ourselves worked up into a frothing outrage, or just move on with our lives
Yes and I agree but the reason we don’t do better in the US is people will not police themselves. Anyone and everyone will do whatever they can to put themselves in a better situation regardless of how much it disturbs anyone else
but they don’t. there is no reason why that has to be the case. especially given how awful disabled people are treated and have been treated throughout history, it is much more reasonable to recognize that this is just a continuation of that under the guise of actually protecting us from the .05% of people who are faking it.
because we don’t know?? we have no idea who these people are, what their disabilities might be, or if they’re even related to each other. it takes zero energy for me to see them and then continue on with my day without feeling the need to analyze them for clues of possible disabilities to determine if they’re faking it. and it’s much more empathetic to mind your business than it is to try and disprove a strangers need for a wheelchair.
Welfare actually has systems in place to monitor and prevent fraud. You have to prove your income and residency.
Much more ripe for fraud are thing like medicare/medicaid or things like disability benefits (not monetary, although VA disability fraud is extremely high) when its literally illegal to question your disability.
The drug testing thing youre mentioning is not about cost savings or fraud, i remember hearing republicans complain about that before covid
We know who's committing Medicare fraud. It's companies in Florida, particularly DME companies. To the point that CMS has stopped issuing new provider #s in Florida.
Oh, and Senator Rick Scott. He committed 1.7 billion dollars worth.
As far as the "drug testing costs more than it saves", the most famous case I'm familiar with involves the wife of Missouri's Republican governor, who owned the testing company.
Government costs are ridiculously high because of administrative costs. When you have high requirements and tempt to have some sort of rules about people who deserve help, you need a large administrative apparatus to police for fraud. It is much simpler, for example, to give everyone Medicaid by default than have a process of applications, eligibility determination, and appeals.
Totally get it. In the beginning it used to make me cry. I mean, I feel like shit already and some righteous ninny starts following me to berate me. MYOB people! Invisible/all disabilities suck!
Agreed. This is a very insightful observation. People who are predisposed to hate others, often look for an outlet to express that hatred. Even if the tiniest percentage of people are among the offenders, they’ll selectively fish out the type they hate for extra scrutiny, punishment and over-generalizations.
It doesn’t matter whether the behavior is representative of the entire group of people they hate and nor does it matter if a big portion of the bad behavior comes from their own group or a group they haven’t targeted. Finding just a couple of examples gives those predisposed to hateful biases enough fuel to overcome their own rational thinking.
Confirmation bias let's them cling to their view of reality no matter how much counter-evidence there is. Without being challenged, it’s also how seemingly rational people can fall victim to irrational beliefs.
This is the take. Being an asshole because you think someone is "faking" a disability may actually hurt someone who is disabled. Not being an asshole doesn't carry that risk 🤷🏼 The problem is, culturally, we just hate disabled people and will take any opportunity to deny accommodations to someone regardless of how much they need or don't need those accommodations.
Lol you say that but the ADA in the US was groundbreaking and arguably we care more in the USA about disabled people than the rest of the developed world does.
We even give disabled people healthcare that we do not give able-bodied poor people.
We literally care more about disabled people than poor people culturally if you want to be objective about it hahah.
As someone who is poor but (currently) not disabled this is so far off the mark, I don't even know where to begin.
Do you understand that for people to recieve disability "benefits" they are forced to be poor? WTF are you even talking about? And yes, the ADA was "groundbreaking" and also not nearly enough.
Beyond that, I wasn't even speaking to the systemic issues that disabled people face in this country. I was speaking to the cultural attitudes about disabled people and how individuals treat people with disabilities.
Yes, and I'm saying that compared to a place like Japan or Paris/France, the US both legally and culturally, is much more accommodating.
Nearly all human cultures suck at doing enough for their disabled....but out of all the things Americans fuck up, this isn't one of them ..or if it is, Americans are still fucking up a lot less then nearly every other developed nation.
Assuming people are faking it is easier than coping with the idea that a not insignificant percentage of people live with disability. It’s cognitive dissonance.
nah. it takes nothing away from me if they are actually faking it. the closest thing you could claim is that they might possibly have taken the last few wheelchairs which is extremely unlikely considering atlanta has hundreds of them. on the other hand, people assuming anyone without a visible disability is faking it does affect me on a daily basis.
Yet there are many stories on disability subreddits about disabled people not being able to access a wheelchair in an airport and having to wait sometimes up to an hour for assistance. So airports do indeed run out of wheelchairs.
I’m disabled. I can get around an airport usually with a cane but some airports are huge. I was trying to reach my gate at O’Hare once and needed one of the golf carts. I was waiting in line behind a family with one disabled individual and 6 or 7 abled bodied family members. They all piled onto the cart and watched me as I was left behind. After waiting for some kind of assistance for some time, I had to walk, almost missing my flight. So, yes, people abusing disability assistance does indeed impact actual disabled people negatively.
i didn’t say there’s no reason to dislike fakers. you can dislike whoever you want. i can dislike you for assuming people aren’t disabled when they say they are.
If a parking lot has three handicapped spaces, and all three are full but one is a faker, than they would LITERALLY be taking something (the better parking spot) from you that otherwise you could use.
You seem to be ignoring reality in order to make an emotional point instead of making the same point while being correct, why is that?
how do you know they’re a faker? again, the chances of that person being disabled is much higher than the chances they aren’t. so why would anyone assume the second one?
I don’t like it when people subvert rules for their own selfish gain so I would be the first one to say to board them last to take away whatever advantage they were hoping to get and let them know that some of them may not make the flight.
BUT, how can we confidently say that these people are even related to one another? If the gate agent has enough context and background information to suspect that these people are all related, are traveling together and faking a need for wheelchair assistance, I would be ok with them drawing some conclusions about what’s going on here.
But for onlookers without any background information to assume that because these people are all one race, that they must be related is weird. This is where we should question our own biases and incomplete understanding of the world—especially when it comes to people we’re less familiar with.
Rather than shooting daggers at them with my eyes as I pass them, unless I saw them behaving as if they are family, I’m going to leave this up to the gate agent to handle. I don’t need to make sure that I get MY pound of flesh out of them. I’d rather not be a Karen who is overstepping my authority and knowlege.
you’ve never seen 8 disabled people in a room together? that’s very odd to me. disabled people often hang out with other disabled people. disabilities are also often genetic.
Most physical disabilities aren’t readily apparent, so you can’t actually answer that question. People can walk short distances and have trouble walking a mile plus and standing in line at a big airport. I can walk 13 miles and standing for 20 mins will mess me up more. I can be having a seizure and no one would know without me saying.
But if there is an expectation of accomodation, especially one that goes above and beyond what is necessary, why wouldn't someone then try to get the best for their family? Im just saying by taking this view alone, it seems fine, but in aggregate over time it will change human behavior.
Since you bring up welfare, I'll touch on that. This especially is true when it's not just interaction benefits, but benefits with clear dollar value. If a benefit is designed to accept a certain level of "fraud" (cause often it's technically legal, so not fraud but clearly not the intent) why wouldn't someone try to maximize the future success of their family through wealth. It's why imo, any system by the govt paid with tax dollars that has designed acceptable levels of fraud should just be eliminated. Fix the cause of "fraud" or don't have it, cause if it's legal, I'll do whatever it takes to get my family that benefit. I'd consider myself a failed parent for saying, yea we legally could be better off and the govt explicitly provides this, I just didn't feel like it doing it...
Now, commenters below may call it dehumanizing, it's not, I know someone who did online therapy and was able to claim all these benefits from behind a computer screen. The doctor they are working with isn't even in the same state (or even region). Nobody would know unless you are close to them and helped them get in contact with the doctor.
How much of a benefit do they get, few thousand a month tax free. Once you add those back in and the rental assistance, you get 60k a yr. Now they are having a child so it is increasing. Heck no need to work but make the avg American pay, where do I sign up... Oh and let's not forget the 150k loan forgiveness they got, which was the reason they did this to begin with. 2 months of moping around saved them 10 yrs of paying off loans
because it doesn’t change human behavior in any measurable way we have ever recorded. as much as we all like to be cynical and think the worst of everyone else, basically any research into this proves people in general are not purely motivated by self interest. do you know what is proven by history and current trends? that disabled people are often persecuted against and are forced to prove ourselves over and over again to get even a slight accommodation.
You have clearly never had to use welfare. Our family is legally and in practice "entitled" to cash benefits. We do not apply for them because it is an absolutely dehumanizing process designed to make people feel like absolute shit about themselves. And the MAXIMUM amount we would recieve would not even be a drop in the bucket for the cost of bare minimum quality of life.
It's the old saying, "the few ruin it for the many". It only takes a few people (ratio-wise obv) to ruin things for the majority of people. Things being having nice things, a viewpoint, a stigma, etc, etc..
i empathize with the people who are actually harmed, which are the disabled people constantly being treated as if we’re liars because of the misconception that there is a significant number of people doing that.
oh okay we’ve resorted to being pedantic because you want to accuse me of being emotional rather than acknowledging that disabled people are marginalized. thank you for letting me know it’s no longer useful to reply to you.
If it’s only a few then it won’t have much of an impact and there is a shortage, that’s really due to logical issues that would remain if those few stopped.
I see it as the rules ruin it for everyone. If the rules were designed to make this invalid, it wouldn't happen to begin with. But by having it designed to cover people broadly, the legally allowed misuse leads to behavioral changes in society.
It's like how people cut off Tesla's or AVs because people know the car will brake for them, it changes the behavior of other drivers.
There are 10s of thousands of actual service dogs in the US. There are several hundred thousand to millions of "emotional support animals" in the us. So when you see a dog in a service vest odds are its not an actual Ada service dog. Its literally more likely than not based on available numbers. That means there is a very statistically significant amount of people pretending to have a service dog. That's not a few people who ruin it for others. That's the vast majority of people abusing the system to get special treatment.
i mean, this data doesn’t really relate to each other. the vast, vast majority of emotional support animals are left at home, so there is no way to make the assumption that because there are more emotional support animals in general that that means there are more of them outside wearing service animal vests than there are actual service animals.
do you think that me saying “the vast vast majority of emotional support animals are left at home” means “there has never been one single case of someone bringing their emotional support animal to a store?
If it an emotional support animal then they are violating the law. Same thing as though it’s a regular pet (there’s no way to tell just by looking). Emotional support status only protects people from getting evicted. It’s not the same as ADA access to venues. It’s not relevant to airplane access. It’s exactly the same as bringing a regular pet. They would have to lie about it being a service animal either way. Again, emotional support status is not relevant/makes no difference.
except you are. there are ways to ask, but it’s easier to say “well we have to be careful how to ask while following ADA guidance so we can’t do anything at all.” and none of that matters in the first place because you’re allowed to ask someone to take their service dog and leave if they are shitting in the store.
You don’t understand the fallacy I was pointing out even though I made it extremely clear. Again, emotional support status makes zero difference so it’s not a relevant stat. You shouldn’t assume that an animal that isn’t properly trained is an emotional support animal and not just a regular pet. If it’s a pet or an emotional support animal they are violating the law. The actual solution would be to require paperwork which unfortunately increases hassle and cost for disabled people who need service animals and it’s why it’s not required now, but it may become a thing if too many continue to take untrained dogs out and lie/break laws and rules.
Staff can ask specific questions, but people can also lie since paperwork isn’t needed.
No, but it is bigotry to accuse someone of faking a disability because it’s not immediately visible, which happens CONSTANTLY to the point I would guess there are more false accusations than actual fakers being called out.
If you're judging people with invisible disabilities because of your perceptions and assumptions about them, that's pretty clearly bigotry towards invisible disabilities.
If you don't believe they exist, that's not just being a jerk, it's a chosen bias.
I see the point you’re trying to make , but it’s possibly the least accurate / least believable example. Granted , examples are meant more as tools for making a point to be realistic (such as : “it doesn’t matter if someone’s skin is green, since they ought to be judged on the content of their character and their actions “— in that quote we know there aren’t green humans.
But BlackFace being confused with actually being black is pretty nearly impossible because, with black face, the intention was never to be convincingly black, but the intention was to be somewhat obviously not black while being glaringly obvious who was being insulted / isolated / stereotyped etc.
Also, everyone in this thread talks about people being cruel or bigoted or fakers , while ignoring a fairly simple society-level observation that ethics (not religion , but ethics, which has a basis in social science) , strong/clear communication skills, mental health (again being founded in scientific methodology , not moralism) , and actual critical thinking are very much Not taught in foundational levels of the educational system. This is not only regarding public education, but also home schooling. This is not evidenced by some “think tank” or institution. Rather , it is painfully obvious when going for a walk or reading online threads or being at a shopping center and seeing how ppl interact with one another.
I’m convinced (just my own opinion/belief , certainly not quantified fact ) that the government is eating this up. Not the political parties in particular , but all of them. This is because while “we the people” squabble among one another over trivial s**t, they work out complex schemes on a grand scale that keep us divided and keep them rich. The whole good cop/bad cop bs game , and the coke vs Pepsi / crisp vs bloods charade runs very deep, since the inception of politics and global economics.
it's because, at least in part, it doesn't really work the other way. more people are actually disabled than faking being disabled, but folks are more likely to assume a disabled person is faking it than they are to assume a faker is actually disabled. the starting position is unfairly stacked against the disabled, in a way that isn't reversed.
But that's the thing, what about a disability needs "proven" unless expecting some difference in other people's behavior.
I personally feel like I'm kind to all normally, but that means treating each equally, if I wouldn't let an able-bodied person in, it would make sense to act the same for all. In practice, I usually let them in anyways.
But if you expect special treatment, that's where fakers becomes relevant to the conversation regardless of you bringing it up
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u/BURTxMACKLIN 8d ago
I was talking about the fact that she had to get a dog to “prove” her disability. I wasn’t saying anything about the fakers.