SMNTY Classics: Marriage and Disability

In the US, there is something often called a 'marriage penalty' for people with disabilities. We dig into the very complicated and often heartbreaking details of what this is, and why the system was designed this way in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. Welcome to Stuff I
Never Told You production of I Heart Radio. And as
this classic comes out, we are in the month of
July twenty twenty five, which is Disability Pride Month, having

(00:26):
to Net Disability Pride, and we're talking a lot about
disability and marriage specifically here in the US. And that
is an episode that we have done kind of recently,
but we thought, you know, we've been talking about it
so much and it's so relevant still to your conversation,
why not bring it back. Yes, so please enjoy this

(00:47):
classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and Longo
Stuff Never Told You, a production of iHeart Radio. And

(01:08):
today we are doing a listener suggestion from Jude and
we'll be reading Jude's message in a second about marriage
and disability because it is Disability Pride Month and this
is something I think a lot of people don't know about.
You can see our recent episode on women in disability,
past episodes on the ADA, the past episode we did

(01:31):
with Invisible Disability with Eves. We've done a lot of
stuff around this, but those are a few that came
to my mind. Also, a note about terminology. I know
I said this recently. There's not agreement currently on the
quote correct way to say people with disabilities or disabled people.

(01:52):
So just a note about that. A lot of people
use them interchangeably. Some people have really strong opinions and
they have great reasoning behind those opinions. We're probably going
to use them based on what the articles we use
use and also the people are using in context of
what we're talking about. So just a note. Also a

(02:13):
note we are not legal experts. No, we have never
interacted with these services, and they're kind of complicated and
I would argue purposely so which we're going to talk about.
But note about that, and just a reminder the disabled
community is the largest marginalized community in the world and

(02:35):
a majority of us will experience a temporary disability at
one point. All right, So just to reiterate from our
recent Monday many on women in disability from the CDC quote,
about thirty six million women in the US have disabilities
and the numbers growing. About forty four percent of those
aged sixty five years are older are living with the disability.

(02:56):
The most common cause of disability for women is arthritis
our rheumatism, and from now women with disabilities are particularly
disadvantaged when it comes to wage equality. In twenty twenty two,
women who are disabled me seventy two cents for every
dollar paid to a man who is disabled. Compared to
the non disabled community, women with disabilities made sixty eight

(03:17):
cents to every dollar earned by able bodied men. If
an individual from this community is seeking employment, The current
hiring rate of women with disabilities between the ages of
sixteen to sixty four stands at thirty seven percent. Throughout
the employment process, women can face challenges ranging from organizational
readiness and inclusivity to accessible employment processes and workplace inclusivity provisions,

(03:41):
and of course, people of color and black people specifically
are disproportionately impacted by all of this as well. Okay,
so let us get on to this listener mail, so
Jude wrote, I apologize if this has been covered in
the past. Part of my disability is memory problems from
ect medical treatment, and I apologize for not thinking of

(04:02):
this before the month started, because I imagine you record
a good chunk of episodes significantly in advance. But I
hate the fact marriage equality does not exist for disabled people.
I mean, while SSI is not ideal, if you am
asked more than two thousand dollars in your bank account,
they'll cut you off. There's a loophole called able accounts,
but I do not know that much about these, though

(04:23):
opening one is a goal of mine. It's basically all
I got because I can't work a normal job. But
part of it is you cannot get married, gay or
straight without the risk of losing benefits. I've also heard
if the government breaking couples apart, they understood they couldn't
get married with this fact. It's not a happy topic,
and I apologize for that, but I think it's a

(04:44):
topic more people need to know about. I am on
the asexual spectrum, but I'm not completely a romantic or anything.
I would love to date someone someday, but I don't
look forward to starting a conversation with Since I'm disabled,
I legally can never marry you. If you're looking for
that sort of thing, go elsewhere. So because of that,
I've never tried dating. A few people have dated me

(05:04):
in the sense of my oblivious ass not knowing it
was a date until they said something. There's more I
could say, like that my government health insurance doesn't cover
gender affirming care. So while I am pursuing top surgery.
I'm going to have to find another way to pay
for it. If you know of a way for me
to become a best selling author, you know where to
find me. Lol. If I did, I would reach out immediately.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
And hopefully it would be with you.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Hopefully we would be with you. Indeed, please buy her
book available wherever you get your books, shameless plug.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Thanks dude, that's so sad. I did not realize I was.
I've heard many people talk about not getting married for
several reasons like this does hurt my benefits for this
through the dual income thing, But wow, this is a
whole different level.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yes, I had only heard kind of anecdotally about it.
I never researched into it. And so thank you very
much Jude for sending this to us, because, like I said,
I think a lot of people don't know about it.
It's very important to talk about. And Jude also sent
resources which we are going to be referencing throughout this
And like I said, it is a bit of a

(06:21):
complicated discussion because it involves a few walls and regulations.
So we're going to break down some of the important
ones first, all revolving around government benefits, largely federal government benefits.
Social Security are otherwise that disabled people in the US
can use based on their ability are not to work.

(06:41):
Oh and just for fun, the rules aren't consistent, so
that's fun. Yeah, But onwards.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
So this is one of the articles that you sent
from the Disability Secrets by Bethany K. Lawrence. So one
is Supplementary Security Income SSI for people with disabilities who
have very low incomes and those who don't qualify for SSDI,
And in twenty twenty four, the SSI income limit for
one person is nine hundred and forty three dollars per

(07:09):
month and for couples it is fourteen hundred and fifteen
dollars a month. That is not a lot. Social Security
Disability Insurance SSDI for eligible workers who can't work because
of disability, Disabled adult child benefits which are based on
your parents' earnings record, and surviving spouse benefits which are
based on that record of your deceased spouse or ex spouse.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, So those are some key terms we're going to
be using throughout this. But when it comes to this
question of marriage and how marriage impacts these benefits are doesn't,
which is what we're specifically looking into We're going to
go kind of piece by piece. So let's start with SSI,
Supplemental Security Income, which is the most important in terms

(07:54):
of this conversation. This was established about fifty years ago.
Getting married doesn't impact eligibility for SSI, but the spouse's
income does. So if the spouse in question has an
income and you live with them, then that does impact

(08:15):
those receiving SSI because the Social Security Administration or the
s SA will pin some of the spouse's income to
the person getting it.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Right, And I'm pretty sure we'll probably talk about this,
but this is also the conversation of like domestic violence
being higher and abuse being higher within the disabled communities
because of rules like this. Yeah, just as a reminder,
this practice is called deeming spousal income. Basically, they quote
deem that a portion of illegally married spouse spouse's income

(08:46):
to the disabled person in question. They can essentially lower
the SSI or make them ineligible entirely. And reminder, we
pay taxes, yeah that go into this. That has been
for military use, but not for people in our community.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Again, reminder, it's also not limited to legal marriage either.
It impacts those quote holding themselves out to be married.
This very much confused me, but it essentially means you're
presenting yourselves as married and or are essentially married, as
we would traditionally judge it. Quote. If there's any evidence

(09:25):
that either of you present yourselves to others as married,
social security will probe further, asking questions such as, how
do you introduce the other person in social situations? How
is mail addressed to you and the other person? Do
you still use your married name if applicable? Do you
own your home jointly? If you rent, are both your

(09:46):
names on the lease? Do your bills, bank accounts, and
tax returns identify you as married? So the SSA could
judge you're pretty much married. I'm guessing that they think
you're trying to evade the rules by being married in
all but documentation and lower or remove the benefits of SSI.

(10:10):
We found a it's a really dry report from two
thousand and three from the SSA about this, and it
seemed to hilariously be like, Yep, it's better if you
don't get married but are living together, but yeah, you
can't hold out for marriage. They like saying the quiet
part out loud.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I mean I think there's a lot of people who
have that conversation in general about legalities in marriage in general.
And for those who do want to get married, that's
so absurd. But for those who don't want to get married,
they're like, I'm good with it. I'm one of those
people from Disability Secrets. If you're living with someone but
not married to that person and we're never married, social
Security might count your roommate's income as if you were married.

(10:55):
This could lower your SSI benefit or even make you
ineligible for benefits. But if you're living with a sibling,
a caregiver, or a platonic roommate, the SSA wouldn't consider
the other person's income. If someone is getting free re
low board from a person that're living with, this can
cut their SSI buy one third. Yep.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
If both that's the people in question receive SSI, their
payments are combined and lowered to the couple's rate, which
is lower than twice the singles rate. So in other words,
two single people together are getting more, but if you
become a couple and you get the couple's rate, you're
getting less.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Just absurd.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, and it has been called the marriage penalty. So
This amounts to going from nine hundred and forty three
dollars a month, which, as you said, Samantha, is very
very low for a single person, to about seven hundred
and seven dollars a person a month for a married
couple if both are receiving SSI. This also impacts countable

(11:58):
resources outside of a car, house, and household goods. This
is reportedly because the SSA believes it's cheaper and easier
living with another person, but it's basically saying, if you
marry someone who is making forty thousand dollars a year,
which is about the federal minimum wage, ish they make
enough to take care of you completely, which is out

(12:20):
of touch and wrong and no, sorry, I wish what
And this isn't taking into account so many things, so
many things like wage stagnation, the gender pay gap, childcare,
numerous unpaid and unseen things that go into care or
rent a, housing control, the difficulty of getting a disability

(12:43):
friendly job, the difficulty of getting these benefits in the
first place, the difficulty of understanding how they work, the
paper work. I'm telling you. When I was researching this,
my mind was like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
The amount of people I've had to advise in social
work to do their disability paperwork twice and to make
sure that you appeal because you will most likely be
denied immediately no matter what. Like my parents, who are
very staunchly conservative and all like I don't want to
take care of anybody else, they had to go for
disability paperwork. They got denied and they were very upset

(13:22):
because it's like, we would never take advantage of ma'am, ma'am.
And me having to talk to them like you have
to appeal. I don't think they did. I think they
got discouraged and they didn't. I'm like, no, you have
to appeal these paperwork because they are literally stacked against you.
Any kind of paperwork when it comes to a federal
government which for assistance for any of that are probably

(13:44):
some of the most complicated paperwork I have ever seen.
One of the best things that happened in my college
course was us being given a full form and told
do this as an assignment, and then coming back and
realizing we'd all named mistakes and had to start over again,
and that what that process looks like, and this is
exactly what they do to try to discourage a person
who is in need. So all of these things is

(14:07):
such a way to hinder and discourage a person from
getting actual assistance which they've probably probably already paid into,
which is the other part that's like uh anyway. Also, yeah,
with all that, children also factor into the equation here.
Each child impacts the numbers in terms of when a
spouse's income is attributed to the person receiving SSI.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, and speaking of complicated, so it's like a chart
how many children you have, how much money you'll get
or won't get. Basically, by getting married, a disabled person
could receive less or none of the benefits they were
receiving before. This can mean a huge difference in quality
of life. Are even the difference between life or death,

(14:51):
so it's a really big deal. The SSA requires that
those receiving SSI contact them within ten days of marriag
are new living arrangements. Otherwise they both charge an overpayment,
which is usually collected by withholding SSI payments, And if
anyone's dealt with stuff like this before, the interest rate

(15:15):
if they choose to charge it can be outrageous And
I feel ten days you're just so stressed during those times.
I can easily see how that would fall through the cracks.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, people don't even go and get their name change
or get their status change. Some of them don't even
go and get their marriage certificate and turned in. Like
I know that it takes a long time. Women changing
their last name. Oh my gosh, it's a damn process.
So this, Yeah, it.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Feels like you would have to with the mail being
what it is, so you would have to mail it
pretty much immediately right for it to rip in time, right.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
And they probably don't given you notice that tell you
that you did that, because the IRA sure doesn't. So
you're like, I don't know if it went in or not.
I got I hope.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
So directors cross a situation.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
If they want to take home more money from me. Thanks.
So here's a quote from nineteenth News. Qualifying for SSI
is important even for people with significant disabilities who can work,
because eligibility is tied to being able to receive home

(16:29):
and community based services covered by Medicaid. In many states,
Medicaid is the only health insurance that provides in home care,
and the average cost ranges from fifty one thousand to
seventy thousand per year. According to the Government Accountability Office,
even most people making middle class income and salary jobs
cannot afford the level of care out of pocket. And again,

(16:52):
as someone who has experienced trying to get care for
people and assistance for people, it is incredibly expensive amount
of cost per hour, and they charge per hour, and
it could be as simply and it's based on the provider.
And by the way, it's the limited amount of people
that are providers is so small that it's probably one

(17:13):
of the most discouraging things I've ever seen in my
life because the likelihood that these people are qualified for
very specific things are low to zero. I've never been
more frustrated in my life than trying to get accessible
care for those who are desperately in need who are
on Medicaid. And y'all, to get on Medicaid, you have
to be in the poverty level essentially, which is also

(17:34):
another problem because you want to live and free yourself.
So there's so many complications to this, and if you
get too much assistance, by the way, it can stack
against you. Yes, so much of this So just getting
that I can't imagine, because in home camera is probably
one of the most expensive ways outside of being in

(17:55):
an institution that is actually qualified with true amount of
medical professionals who can actually cater to their clientele. So
what I mean by that is like having one doctor
of per three patients, is that of one doctor per
one hundred patients type of thing. So it's incredibly difficult.
And the amount of people who the good ones who

(18:19):
stop providing services for Medicaid because they've had, god, had
so many run arounds with the government and not being
able to do that for them for people, as you
can tell, I could keep going, but it's one of
the most frustrating, disheartening and honestly, it does feel like
it's a bit of eugenics within the government when it
comes to stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll touch on that more briefly in a second.
But this has been continues to be a big point
of conversation because we have people in government that are
seeing things like I understand, I can go days without
this necessary piece of life. I don't know why we
have to.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's not like I go back to my regular life
after the one day I tried to see what this
felt like.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right, Oh makes me mad? And yeah, like you're saying
those those home care hours are huge, and there's so
many it's so important, and in many cases it's about
like human dignity and the cost of losing that and
the cost of providing that. And on top of this,
we need to have another conversation about how we pay

(19:26):
workers for doing this, because there is a reason there's
so much burnout and it's not compensated or respected like
it should.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Be, you know, as in fact, most of the times
that the workers are there, they're unqualified. And I don't
see that as I'm not saying that as a slap
to those who are in there in the field. What
I'm talking about is in general, they're so unwilling to
pay the people that what they're worth that they're willing
to hire people who are not qualified to do it.
So maybe have one or two like ten hour courses

(20:01):
and then they come in as an assistant without like
any conversations. Like I've had friends who would do part
time jobs as college students being pair of pros, so
they assist those with disabilities in schools and try to
be like active advocates and all that, but they're not
really qualified. They're just sometimes college students who just need

(20:21):
extra money, which means they're not giving the care. Not
not everyone, because there are those who really do care
and love their job and love the people they're representing.
So not saying that, but the qualifications are so low
that any almost anyone can do it. So it's kind
of like, is this really helping? Are you just throwing,
like you know, a band aid over a huge gap
of needs, And which is also often why a lot

(20:42):
of the kids in the system that have any type
of disabilities, learning disabilities, any of that, are left behind
because again, no one is really qualified to represent them
and advocate for them, and they don't know how. That's
that other conversations like the parents don't know how, so
the pair of pros definitely don't know how oftentimes, So
I say this with like having seeing that and then

(21:05):
although imposing all these things on top of that and
not allowing for people with disabilities to have the life
that they want. It's just such an odd thing. And
so having these workers who are not qualified because they
don't care enough to teach and or give them the
qualifications that they need, and then the ones that are
so good at it, and the ones who are caring
and the ones who do go beyond to learn about it,

(21:27):
are burned out, like you said, and it's all literal
minimum wage because that's the only the most maybe is
like twelve dollars an hour. And this is for the
sake of someone else's livelihood, Like it's like question mark.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of big question marks in this one.
So that is SSI. Let us talk about SSDI or
Social Security Disability Insurance. Okay, So, if someone has worked
long enough to qualify for SSDI, getting married shouldn't affect

(22:03):
There are their spouse's benefit payments. There aren't income limits,
There aren't property limits like there are with SSI. Now,
if someone gets both SSDI and SSI, that can change
the answer that being said. If a person is collecting
SSDI from someone else based on their work, marrying or

(22:25):
other things can impact the benefit amount. So here are
a couple of common examples of that. An adult child
receiving benefits from their parents SSDI based on their parents
work record will probably lose the SSDI benefits. By getting married.
Children can lose their parents SSDI dependence benefits based on

(22:46):
a couple of things, including turning eighteen or nineteen depending
or getting married. Another big example, widowers are eligible for
receiving their partners SSDI if they were eligible. However, if
you're young longer than sixty, are younger than fifty and
don't have a disability, and you remarry those benefits, stop,

(23:07):
which I think again is ridiculous because yeah, like you said,
you put work and money into this, Like wow, okay,
it goes away right all right? And just to note here,
I know we joke about it on the show. You
can hear it in our voices because we laugh when
we feel helpless. Our healthcare system in the US is

(23:30):
a mess at best at best. And this isn't to
say there aren't amazing people working in it, working to
change it. We've heard from some of you, we know
some of you, and you're amazing, and you do so
much in the face of so much. But in this case,
what we're talking about specifically here is some of the
routine medications and procedures or visits for people receiving SSI

(23:54):
or SSDI are thousands, if not tens of thousands of
dollars a month. And we know all about private insurance
and how they try to get around covering people with
pre existing conditions, legal or not. It's not supposed to
be legal, but I feel like they still get away
with it. And this includes a spouse's insurance, which seems
to be a big part of what underpins this marriage penalty.

(24:16):
Which we also know if you're depending on your spouse's
private insurance, that that can look pretty grim as well.
So it's really really expensive ultimately, as what I'm saying,
and most of us, I would say almost all of
us couldn't afford it. So Jude also sent us an

(24:40):
NPR story from twenty twenty two called millions of disabled
Americans could lose federal benefits if they get married, by
Erica Mahoney that, in very MPR fashion, has a very
specific personal story while also telling like a much larger
story in it, Mahoney interviews Congressman Jimmy Panetta of California,
who had recently introduced the Marriage Equality for Disabled Built

(25:03):
Act in the US House of Representatives. Other states like
Ohio and Louisiana fallis suit. I feel like all of
them have been stalled. But please let me know if
that's not true, and they dive into how these laws
and rules were written. It was just assumed people with
disabilities wouldn't get married, which is an incredibly ablest idea

(25:24):
that we've talked about before and also holds the kind
of infantilizing and desexualizing of people with disabilities within it,
but also a long history of violence and control. It's
also true the idea used to be that one person,
the man in a very heterosexual sense, was the breadwinner

(25:47):
who took care of the wife, who did all the housekeeping.
This is no longer the case and really not possible
for a lot of people. Almost everyone I know that's
in a couple can only exist based on dual income.
It's just really antiquated. And yes, we need to address
why single income homes are so unrealistic now too, and

(26:09):
pay people who take care of kids. Having kids is.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Expensive, right, I think it's just such a weird fault
of like again in a world where our country specifically
is like we need to care for the children, but
not really few and you take it on your own.
You're on your own. It's gotten like this level of
disconnect where you think, well, now they have children, and

(26:32):
you're pushes for more children to be born because that's
your thing. Apparently, how are you going to help?

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, And there's like so many things that we've talked
about very briefly or mentioned very briefly in this that
I'm like, well, at the very least, you could do
something to raise the like our pay what we get.
You could do something to prevent housing and rent going wild.

(27:00):
They're like so many small things.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
How about what you can do We save the environment
and help the environment so our children don't grow into
this horrible, horrible healthscape with no access to anything because
you know, beaches are being closed off because of bacteria
that's growing because of climate change and pollution. We can
do about that, y'all. But yeah, on top of that,
if every child is special and unique and has all

(27:24):
these things, then we need to treat each child as
a special case and provide exactly what is needed, including
whatever medical care they need, and without grumbling and without
fighting and without overcharging. Mm hmmm, that would be awesome too.
And here and just like one more reminder here, disability

(27:45):
in this country is expensive and very very expensive. Another
story we read estimated that without Medicaid provided through SSI,
the person in question would have to pay one hundred
thousand to two hundred thousand a year for in home business. Yeah,
that's the number. I was looking for, honestly, because fifty
to seventy with medicaid is pretty generous. I think even

(28:10):
with Medicaid it would probably hit to the one hundred
thousand grand a year, especially if it's like in home care,
consistent in home care.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, and it depends on so many factors too, but
it's expensive that we can say for sure. And going
back to another point that you mentioned, Samantha, another part

(28:45):
of this whole thing is this overblown and politicized fear
of fraud that people are essentially trying to gain the
system and that people with disabilities are lazy and aren't trustworthy,
not worthy. Honestly, and not only is that completely wrong,
it was clear and doing this research, as I said,

(29:06):
how difficult every step of this is, from getting the
benefits to proving that you need them, to keeping them right.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Just as a reminder, to lose disability, it doesn't pay anything, literally,
like you have to be so on top of everything
that you may not even get a notice that you're
about to be dropped.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yes, there have been a lot of news stories about
that lately. Here's a quote from Forbes. As disability scholar
Ari Niemann recently noted In a New York Times article
on how benefits are confusing by design, the sheer complexity
of these different rules are, like most disability benefits rules,
kafka esque, Intentionally or not, they further penalize people who

(29:45):
have less access to accurate information and less ability to
strategically plan out their finances and legal arrangements. Because obviously,
if you know about these penalties ahead of time, you
can avoid them by simply not getting married. It's a
terrible position and a gut wrenching decision, as anyone who
is married or has wanted to marry well knows. But

(30:05):
the penalty itself and the supposed savings to the taxpayer
is easily avoided. But it's also easily triggered if the
people involved don't know about it, or if they get
bad advice about it. In a sense, the government hopes
in part to save money by disabled people accidentally triggering
these benefits reductions.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Right again, a guy actor. But they also hope they
can just kill them off. It's eugenics legitimately anyway. Can
continue on another. Times articles from twenty sixteen quotes Philip Cohen,
a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, who
knows the overall first marriage rate in the United States
for people age eighteen to forty nine is forty eight

(30:47):
point nine per one thousand, for people with disability is
just twenty four point four.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
And yes, as you said, some have even brought up
the dark history of eugenics in this and how this
intentionally or not seems to discourage disabled people from getting married,
which is something many people do before I have kids,
not everybody. It even seems to incentivize divorce, which, when
you put it in context of the whole Christian conservative

(31:15):
push for the nuclear family, seems a little off. Something
is not right.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well, I mean, if we follow along those lines and
we know that it comes from an area and background,
it makes a lot more sense. It's true, we laugh
because we're in vain, but yeah, but that's just real.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, yep. And of course there are a lot of
discussions and disagreements around marriage, but for many it does
signify acceptance by society, a legal recognition of commitment, something
someone may have wanted their whole life. And for a
lot of folks there are substantial government benefits for getting married,
and it seems pretty dup that in this case it's

(31:59):
the opposite sit If it's a choice between living and
functioning in marriage, then there's no real choices there. And
I feel like the fact that they have that kind
of holding out for marriage really drives home the point, right,
it doesn't even matter if they think that you're basically

(32:22):
a married couple, then that they're going to take those
benefits away anyway.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Right, literally trying to find any reason to take the
benefits away.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yeah, mm hmm uh. And as I said, for some people,
this is yeah, this is life or death. This is right.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
So for a chunk of people, this is life or
death like endpoint. Because as we've talked about before, and
as it's been said it stated by many disability activists,
being abled body is temporary, whether it's age or whatever whatnot,
being disabled is a reality is going to happen. We

(33:03):
see that again. Like you know, we've talked to you
and I have talked about the fact that our parents
recently had gone to the hospital for different incidents, and
we fear when they fall or when they do something
and are no longer able to care for themselves. The
cost of money just in trying to find in living
care for elderly Yeah, is absurd, and if you if
they are not already like provided by medicare, which is great,

(33:26):
but they're still trying to cut medicare. We saw that
in the state of Georgia. They're trying to cut Medicare
and trying to reason with my parents about like your
governor has done this, but they don't quite see it.
Like they have come to the realization that Medicare is
allowed for them to go get examinations, which I'm really
glad that they have actually taken the opportunity to use

(33:46):
those benefits, but like trying to remind them this is
very very we're on a very like thin line on
whether or not this is going to be accessible in
the future.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yes, and just to note again not legal, but a
lot of this does relate to in the US when
you get like social Security as an older person as well,
so a lot of it does.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Have right, they're all interlocking.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah, it's just please don't look up do your own research.
I hope this is a good starting off point, but
like we said, it's confusing. It's purposely designed to be confusing,
and it changes often. It changes often, so I believe
the numbers be quoted in this was as of twenty
twenty three or twenty twenty four, so it was a

(34:31):
recent change. But yeah, I'm thank you so much, Jude,
yeah for suggesting this. And if there's anything we got
wrong or could have phrased better, because I was a
little like, wow, this is some dense documentation. Yes, please

(34:52):
let us know and if there are any resources or
if you have any stories you would like us to share.
I would love to hear here from all of you.
You can email us at Stuffmedia, moom Stuff at iHeartMedia
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast. We're also on Instagram and TikTok at stuff
I Never Told You. We're on YouTube and we are

(35:13):
on public and we have a book you can get
wherever you get your books, where we did talk about
some of this stuff in there. Thanks as always to
our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our
contributor Joey.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told yous
direction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the heart Radio app Apple podcast
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.