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buggeryThe United States Supreme Court ruled today that lenders are now allowed to seize Social Security benefits from disabled persons with student loans never fully paid off. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle, but it's being reported everywhere)
Yes, that's right. People who become disabled sometime between starting school and paying off their loan in full can now look forward to the few hundred dollars they live on each month being dipped into by whichever loan-purchasing megabank now holds their loans. (It's common for student loan debts to be sold by the original issuing bank as little as a year after they're approved and disbursed, and not uncommon for the loan debts to be resold at least once later on.) How much will these companies be taking? Does it really matter when you're already living below the poverty line, as most people receiving Social Security benefits due to disability (as opposed to retirement) are?
It's almost scarier than the fact that formerly-protected-against-seizure-or-garnishment-for-payment-of-debts Social Security income has now been stripped of that protection, that the ruling is completely without legal basis.
Here's something you may not have known, something written into the laws governing federally subsidised student loans in the U.S.: "All loans received under programs authorized by Title IV, of the Higher Education Act can be canceled for several different circumstances including: (1) in the event of your death; or (2) if you become totally and permanently disabled after the loan is disbursed. ... If the holder of the loan determines that you have become totally and permanently disabled, your obligation, and the obligation of any endorser of your loan, to make any further payments on the loan is discharged." (Source: US Department of Education website, www.ed.gov)
This is the law. This is a protection written into the legislation that makes student loans possible.
As many of the people who read my journal know, I have multiple sclerosis (MS) and fibromyalgia (FMS) and have been disabled since January of 2000. I've had personal experience with the cancellation process. Here's what happened.
Once I had my diagnosis (I had already lost my job, and was in the process of losing a seven-year relationship as well the house we'd bought together, the latter because my income dropped from over $30K to zero at the same time that my medical and insurance costs went up -- I wouldn't actually start receiving my SSDI benefits until almost exactly six months after the foreclosure date, and I was in the fortunate minority of newly disabled Americans who get their determination without having to appeal) I learned about the loan cancellation process. I had each lender send me a form for each loan they held, each of which had to be filled out by my doctor, certifying my disability. There were two companies holding several loan accounts each, in my case. In one case, the lender processed the forms promptly, cancelled the loans they held, and refunded to me the small amount they had been paid after I became disabled. This was also the lender who I found out about cancellation from in the first place, when one good-hearted loan specialist finally (after months of my making hopeful deferral arrangements) asked me why I hadn't applied for it if becoming unable to work due to disability was the reason I'd fallen behind on my loan payments.
The other lender, however... They rejected the forms they received three times, always over some minor detail that did not affect the substance of the information, and I had to have the doctor fill them out yet again. Finally they couldn't come up with grounds to reject the form -- my doctor had grown quite as sick of the cycle as I had -- but they didn't cancel the loan. I contacted them several times about the status of the cancellation, and was always told it was still being reviewed or processed.
I figured, at the time, that this other lender simply didn't want to refund me the small amount they'd managed to get after the date I became disabled.
But now I'm not so sure, and here's why. The big corporations that buy up student loan accounts "donate" a lot of their profits to political campaigns. Not coincidentally, the politicians who accept such donations when running for re-election often vote to make it easier for their friends in the student loan business to collect more money from the students and former students who needed loans to go to college. I have to wonder if at least some of these companies weren't hoping to have the Social Security national disability refuge opened up for drilling all along.
Incidentally -- this is something else many people don't know -- under ordinary circumstances, Social Security payments, whether Disability Insurance payments (SSDI, the one specific taxes are taken out of Americans' pay for) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI, for those who wouldn't receive enough to live on from SSDI only), are exempt from seizure or garnishment, even by court order. If someone sued me, and won a judgment, they could not collect from my SSDI income; it's protected. If I signed up for a credit card, ran up a debt, and then didn't pay it, the credit card holder couldn't garnish my SSDI checks; they're protected. (Not to worry, though, folks -- I pay my doctors and other creditors on time, and the catastrophic loss of income that accompanied my onset of disability wrecked my credit rating so thoroughly I can't get a credit card anymore. Debit cards are as important an accessibility device as wheelchairs.) The only case in which SSI or SSDI income can be seized is if the entity owed is the government itself.
Or so it worked when I woke up this morning.
This is horrible. This is a travesty and an unconscionable betrayal of America's neediest citizens. But don't despair! For one thing, all wrong court decisions are reversed eventually (though note "eventually" may not occur in your lifetime). More importantly, THERE IS SOMETHING *YOU* CAN DO.
Call your representatives in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Call your representatives in your state's legislature, and call your governor. If you've called more than one state home, call them both, or all. You can use this page at congress.org to look up who your elected officials are and how to contact them. Tell them how outraged you are. Ask what they plan to do to protect disabled Americans in your state from having food and medicine taken out of their mouths by callous corporations.
(If you're not a U.S. citizen or resident, and want to and can afford to help, pick a state near you, or one in which a friend or family member lives. I live in Connecticut, if you can't pick a state any other way.)
Unfortunately, sending e-mail is close to useless, according to political insiders. Letters sent through the post have been problematic since the anthrax scare. Faxes are actually more effective in getting your message heard, at least in some politicians' offices, so by all means type something up if you have access to a fax machine. Going to a politician's office in person is very much hit-or-miss. But when you make a phone call, and give the staffer you speak with your name and tell them why you're calling, at a minimum, the politician whose office you've contacted gets a tally of how many people like you have called that day to express a similar view. At best, elected officials are moved by such calls to act, and that is our aim.
As with any grassroots lobbying campaign, use your own words as much as possible. If you and some friends want to fax in same text that one of you came up with, send one copy with all your signatures (and printed names in full). And it wouldn't be a grassroots lobbying campaign without you telling your friends, family, neighbours, co-workers, teachers, students, mail carriers, pizza delivery drivers, and anyone else you deal with what you're doing and why you're doing it and encouraging them to join you.
Because I know that most of the people reading this aren't made of money, and vanishingly few elected officials have toll-free contact numbers, I also have a way to help you make these calls, at least if you reside in most parts of the U.S.
When I refer new customers to my long-distance provider, they receive a$2 $5 credit* on their first bill, which is enough to cover a minimum of two calls and could easily cover as many as six calls of about three minutes each. There are no other fees -- no sign-up, monthly, or switching fees. Rather than turning this into a commercial, I'll just point you to the company's website and let you research how it works yourself. If you want the $2 credit, you'll need to call the number at the bottom of that page (877-499-2368) and, when signing up, tell the USA Datanet operator you were referred by Jackie Samen, registered phone number 203-574-2925. (No, you can't reach me at that number right now. I'm not much for publishing my home phone number where any unbalanced stalker or telemarketing-firm-owned webspider can find it.) Of course, I'm relying on good faith that anyone who uses my referral to get the credit will in fact make calls about this issue to the elected officials of their choice. But I have to trust in the fundamentally good nature of my fellow humans.
I mean, I literally have to. It's part of the definition of disability that there are some things I simply can't do by myself.
Yes, that's right. People who become disabled sometime between starting school and paying off their loan in full can now look forward to the few hundred dollars they live on each month being dipped into by whichever loan-purchasing megabank now holds their loans. (It's common for student loan debts to be sold by the original issuing bank as little as a year after they're approved and disbursed, and not uncommon for the loan debts to be resold at least once later on.) How much will these companies be taking? Does it really matter when you're already living below the poverty line, as most people receiving Social Security benefits due to disability (as opposed to retirement) are?
It's almost scarier than the fact that formerly-protected-against-seizure-or-garnishment-for-payment-of-debts Social Security income has now been stripped of that protection, that the ruling is completely without legal basis.
Here's something you may not have known, something written into the laws governing federally subsidised student loans in the U.S.: "All loans received under programs authorized by Title IV, of the Higher Education Act can be canceled for several different circumstances including: (1) in the event of your death; or (2) if you become totally and permanently disabled after the loan is disbursed. ... If the holder of the loan determines that you have become totally and permanently disabled, your obligation, and the obligation of any endorser of your loan, to make any further payments on the loan is discharged." (Source: US Department of Education website, www.ed.gov)
This is the law. This is a protection written into the legislation that makes student loans possible.
As many of the people who read my journal know, I have multiple sclerosis (MS) and fibromyalgia (FMS) and have been disabled since January of 2000. I've had personal experience with the cancellation process. Here's what happened.
Once I had my diagnosis (I had already lost my job, and was in the process of losing a seven-year relationship as well the house we'd bought together, the latter because my income dropped from over $30K to zero at the same time that my medical and insurance costs went up -- I wouldn't actually start receiving my SSDI benefits until almost exactly six months after the foreclosure date, and I was in the fortunate minority of newly disabled Americans who get their determination without having to appeal) I learned about the loan cancellation process. I had each lender send me a form for each loan they held, each of which had to be filled out by my doctor, certifying my disability. There were two companies holding several loan accounts each, in my case. In one case, the lender processed the forms promptly, cancelled the loans they held, and refunded to me the small amount they had been paid after I became disabled. This was also the lender who I found out about cancellation from in the first place, when one good-hearted loan specialist finally (after months of my making hopeful deferral arrangements) asked me why I hadn't applied for it if becoming unable to work due to disability was the reason I'd fallen behind on my loan payments.
The other lender, however... They rejected the forms they received three times, always over some minor detail that did not affect the substance of the information, and I had to have the doctor fill them out yet again. Finally they couldn't come up with grounds to reject the form -- my doctor had grown quite as sick of the cycle as I had -- but they didn't cancel the loan. I contacted them several times about the status of the cancellation, and was always told it was still being reviewed or processed.
I figured, at the time, that this other lender simply didn't want to refund me the small amount they'd managed to get after the date I became disabled.
But now I'm not so sure, and here's why. The big corporations that buy up student loan accounts "donate" a lot of their profits to political campaigns. Not coincidentally, the politicians who accept such donations when running for re-election often vote to make it easier for their friends in the student loan business to collect more money from the students and former students who needed loans to go to college. I have to wonder if at least some of these companies weren't hoping to have the Social Security national disability refuge opened up for drilling all along.
Incidentally -- this is something else many people don't know -- under ordinary circumstances, Social Security payments, whether Disability Insurance payments (SSDI, the one specific taxes are taken out of Americans' pay for) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI, for those who wouldn't receive enough to live on from SSDI only), are exempt from seizure or garnishment, even by court order. If someone sued me, and won a judgment, they could not collect from my SSDI income; it's protected. If I signed up for a credit card, ran up a debt, and then didn't pay it, the credit card holder couldn't garnish my SSDI checks; they're protected. (Not to worry, though, folks -- I pay my doctors and other creditors on time, and the catastrophic loss of income that accompanied my onset of disability wrecked my credit rating so thoroughly I can't get a credit card anymore. Debit cards are as important an accessibility device as wheelchairs.) The only case in which SSI or SSDI income can be seized is if the entity owed is the government itself.
Or so it worked when I woke up this morning.
This is horrible. This is a travesty and an unconscionable betrayal of America's neediest citizens. But don't despair! For one thing, all wrong court decisions are reversed eventually (though note "eventually" may not occur in your lifetime). More importantly, THERE IS SOMETHING *YOU* CAN DO.
Call your representatives in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Call your representatives in your state's legislature, and call your governor. If you've called more than one state home, call them both, or all. You can use this page at congress.org to look up who your elected officials are and how to contact them. Tell them how outraged you are. Ask what they plan to do to protect disabled Americans in your state from having food and medicine taken out of their mouths by callous corporations.
(If you're not a U.S. citizen or resident, and want to and can afford to help, pick a state near you, or one in which a friend or family member lives. I live in Connecticut, if you can't pick a state any other way.)
Unfortunately, sending e-mail is close to useless, according to political insiders. Letters sent through the post have been problematic since the anthrax scare. Faxes are actually more effective in getting your message heard, at least in some politicians' offices, so by all means type something up if you have access to a fax machine. Going to a politician's office in person is very much hit-or-miss. But when you make a phone call, and give the staffer you speak with your name and tell them why you're calling, at a minimum, the politician whose office you've contacted gets a tally of how many people like you have called that day to express a similar view. At best, elected officials are moved by such calls to act, and that is our aim.
As with any grassroots lobbying campaign, use your own words as much as possible. If you and some friends want to fax in same text that one of you came up with, send one copy with all your signatures (and printed names in full). And it wouldn't be a grassroots lobbying campaign without you telling your friends, family, neighbours, co-workers, teachers, students, mail carriers, pizza delivery drivers, and anyone else you deal with what you're doing and why you're doing it and encouraging them to join you.
Because I know that most of the people reading this aren't made of money, and vanishingly few elected officials have toll-free contact numbers, I also have a way to help you make these calls, at least if you reside in most parts of the U.S.
When I refer new customers to my long-distance provider, they receive a
I mean, I literally have to. It's part of the definition of disability that there are some things I simply can't do by myself.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-08 02:54 am (UTC)