Hacker News Reader

Comment by raincole | Hacker News Reader

> It is a letter that arrives every few years from the government, asking a question that is medically absurd and philosophically insulting: "Are you still disabled?"

It... doesn't sound like an absurd practice at all. There are curable disabilities. And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology. It sounds about right to review the situation every a few years.

View on HN

> There are curable disabilities.

True, but it should be obvious in 99% of cases if a condition is lifelong.

>And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology.

Very rarely tbh.

I can't think of a single lifelong condition that was cured in the last decade.

Even then it should be trivial to only review cases when a cure is available, by searching the database for people with that condition.

Relevant to this story, laser eye surgery was developed in the late 80s/early 90s and can improve sight to the level that some who were legally blind no longer are.

> Relevant to this story

Is it? The Author mentions he has degenerated optical nerves from birth, I don't think laser fixes that.

Yeah, but don't expect this level of fine granularity from government, any government, thats ridiculous expectations. Heck, I wouldn't expect it neither from any private company as a default state.

I wouldn't expect it from any goverment either, but I would expect it from someone who allegedly read the story and is trying to share relevant information.

Hepatitis C has effectively been cured. Obesity, sickle cell, and cystic fibrosis have all heard their death knell though not a complete cure.

Hep C regimens are getting closer and closer to "take a pill for a couple months" - no more interferon injections or multiple rounds of multiple drugs.

Trikafta is a functional cure for 90% of CF patients, I believe - not easy or cheap but normalizes what you care about bar the administration of the treatment itself.

Sickle cell has CRISPR treatments that are incredibly invasive and awful but do functionally cure the disease more or less permanently for a cool "couple million"

And everyone knows about GLP-1 drugs for obesity. The latest batch are as good or better than bariatric surgery without, you know, the surgery part.

Great list!

There's also Leber congenital amaurosis, a form of blindness that now has a (very expensive) gene therapy: https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017-10-12/fda-panel-endorses-gene...

Yea, this sounds like a completely reasonable process to me. They should obviously update their system to accept the electronic submission of evidence, but the process itself is fine.

The concept behind the process might be fine.

The demand that poor blind people acquire and submit records through an obscure technology, at their own personal expenses, on short deadline, is obviously absurd.

In particular, the requirement to re-prove basic facts suggests a fundamentally hostile design - you could just ask them to send a simple email asserting that yes, they are still disabled; or have them check a box and return a form.

Is there's truly an epidemic of people staying on welfare after their lifelong disability was cured?

Who else is supposed to aquire and submit the records? If I'm getting free money for five years and all that's required is a fax every five years, I wouldn't consider that particularly burdensome. I have to fill in a timesheet every week.

Maybe a better way to accomplish this is a free yearly physical with a doctor? The doctor can then be required to share any changes in disability with the government. Missing x years of appointments also stops your benefits. If you can't come to the doctor maybe they could do a house call?

And there's also fraud. If there's no periodic check, a single diagnosis from a corrupt doctor can give someone disability benefits for life.

This might not be the right frequency, though, and only accepting post/fax is bullshit. Doubly so for short deadlines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com