this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
563 points (98.0% liked)

Chronic Illness

485 readers
427 users here now

A community/support group for chronically ill people. While anyone is welcome, our number one priority is keeping this a safe space for chronically ill people.

This is a support group, not a place for people to spout their opinions on disability.

Rules

  1. Be excellent to each other

  2. Absolutely no ableism. This includes harmful stereotypes: lazy/freeloaders etc

  3. No quackery. Does an up-to date major review in a big journal or a major government guideline come to the conclusion you’re claiming is fact? No? Then don’t claim it’s fact. This applies to potential treatments and disease mechanisms.

  4. No denialism or minimisation This applies challenges faced by chronically ill people.

  5. No psychosomatising psychosomatisation is a tool used by insurance companies and governments to blame physical illnesses on mental problems, and thereby saving money by not paying benefits. There is no concrete proof psychosomatic or functional disease exists with the vast majority of historical diagnoses turning out to be biomedical illnesses medicine has not discovered yet. Psychosomatics is rooted in misogyny, and consisted up until very recently of blaming women’s health complaints on “hysteria”.

Did your post/comment get removed? Before arguing with moderators consider that the goal of this community is to provide a safe space for people suffering from chronic illness. Moderation may be heavy handed at times. If you don’t like that, find or create another community that prioritises something else.

founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
 

Alt Text:

Woman in a wheelchair saying: “THERE IS NO MARRIAGE EQUALITY UNTIL PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES CAN MARRY WITHOUT LOSING BENEFITS”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Specifically "disability" benefits or just overall social security transfers?

Bcs that might be due to the total household income too (and the fact that unfortunately a lot of ppl with disabilities & chronic pain don't have a lot of income).
(Overall we tend to be overly strict about such stuff bcs politicians often exploit it in a manner 'why should we pay for a millionaires basic wheelchair?!??' ... but I didn't know there was like a cut-off income point for overall benefits in terms of using them for specific medical things in Italy & Belgium, iirc that's not the case for glasses & basic dental care, tho the availability of the later in Italy is poor/really basic afaik.)

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Well it’s the welfare people with disabilities (who cannot work due to their disability) are eligeable for. The system is different in every country but usually you have a base rate that is not enough to survive on (in the US it tends to be 8k per year, other countries aren’t much more generous), and hopefully you also qualify for other help, like maybe food stamps or subsidised energy payments.

In most of the countries I listed, both of those are slashed down or straight up removed if you marry someone with income, but especially the second. Which basically removes any freedom for the disabled person in the relationship and makes it way easier for abusive relationships to happen.

Because you end up having a huge power imbalance. You cannot fight for yourself, you rely on your partner for your daily care or for transport if you need to go anywhere. You also rely on them for money etc. The relationship can end up as heirarchical as a Parent/Child relationship. So it’s really a problem that if you choose to marry you lose all your independence.

[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My wife gets about $20,000/year in disability payments (US).

I have no idea how it's calculated. I'm assuming it would be much more if she wasn't married to me.

[–] Almonds@mander.xyz 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

If it's ssdi I know it's calculated by the average yearly income prior to disability. I made ~$28k/year before applying for ssdi 10 years ago, and I get about half that from ssdi now (after col raises)

[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Yeah. My wife had her own optometry practice. Unfortunately her income was not what most of her patients and employees thought it was. In her last full year of working full time her total salary for the year was $6000.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)