After sitting in the waiting room of his clinic several mornings in a row, I met Dr. Timberlake. It turns out, there is nothing shifty about him. He is a doctor in a very poor place where pretty much every person who comes into his office tells him they are in pain.
"We talk about the pain and what it’s like," he says. "I always ask them, 'What grade did you finish?'"
What grade did you finish, of course, is not really a medical question. But Dr. Timberlake believes he needs this information in disability cases because people who have only a high school education aren't going to be able to get a sit-down job.
Dr. Timberlake is making a judgment call that if you have a particular back problem and a college degree, you're not disabled. Without the degree, you are.
Posted by lAljax
3 Comments
Isn’t the rise in disability rates also explained by the massive increase in obesity rates nationwide?
Obesity is known for making all sorts of disabilities more severe, with it being more widespread cases where someone could reasonably struggle and still get by become way worse due to obesity.
Huh, the UK is having a similar issue. Though it is more of last 15 years thing whereas the US seems to be last 40.
https://news.sky.com/story/surge-in-young-people-claiming-disability-benefits-research-suggests-13198223
In regard’s to this article, The kid with a reading disability getting his family money but only as long as he is disabled is quite the perverse incentive. One more way to make education fail I suppose.
> There used to be a lot of jobs that you could do with just a high school degree, and that paid enough to be considered middle class. I knew, of course, that those have been disappearing for decades. What surprised me was what has been happening to many of the people who lost those jobs: They’ve been going on disability.