Kamis, 11 April 2013

Physical Therapists and America's Disability System

Thanks to Adam Rufa, PT at ForwardThinkingPT.com for pointing our attention to the This American Life episode on March 22nd, 2013 called Trends With Benefits. This episode is about disability in America.

Read Adam's excellent post about the 14 million Americans who don't show up for work every Monday morning but also don't show up in the official Federal unemployment numbers.

Rising disability is a 30-year American trend and 250,000 new Americans are applying for disability each month.

Perhaps the most backwards part about the disability system in America is there are only two ways off: you get so old that Social Security and Medicare take over or, you die.

Amazingly, the disability program doesn't provide physical therapy benefits to return you to your prior level of function.

Physical therapists should listen to this 57:26 minute podcast by reporter Chana Joffe-Walt for a very interesting tutorial on America's disability system.

Perhaps physical therapists can understand our patients' perspective a little better if we understand the system we all live in.