Social Security

My dad and my sister hold very similar views about getting what one can from the government. They both feel that if something is available, one should be getting it.

My sister, for example, is 44 years old and has received governmental assistance most of her adult life. She feels that since it is there, she’s entitled to it. She went on a bit of a rage this past weekend because there was some sort of mix up at a doctor’s appointment and she was forced to spend $200 of her own cash to pay for something that the government should have paid for. And then, to add insult to her injury (imagined, perhaps?) she was denied an increase to her monthly allowed food stamps when she asked for it to compensate for her having to pay her own medical bill.

I’m sure my own bias is coming through pretty clearly here.

After her little rant about welfare, Sister asked me if we were receiving social security benefits for Olivia. I said no.

She asked me why we aren’t.

I didn’t feel like going into detail so I just said I hadn’t gotten around to filling out the paperwork.

She reminded me that with O’s diagnosis, she is automatically approved for benefits and I should be getting the assistance and perhaps banking it for Olivia’s future if we don’t need it to provide for her day to day care right now.

And maybe she’s right but it doesn’t feel right to me. We don’t need government assistance to live our lives. We don’t need help with O’s medical bills because she doesn’t have any other than the occasional $25 co-pay for an office visit. We see her developmental pediatrician once every two years. We see the regular doctor a couple of times a year or when she has a cold or injury bad enough to warrant it.

Sister reminded me that social security and Medicaid would also provide me with travel money for when we have to trek down to Indianapolis for O’s afore mentioned every other yearly developmental ped appointment.

But…I don’t NEED travel assistance. I realize how lucky we are, how blessed, that we don’t need help, that we don’t need financial assistance to travel or even to pay what little medical bills we have. I also know how lucky we are NOT to have major medical expenses. I get, too, that there are people who do need this and I appreciate that the assistance is there for those people but for those of us to take it when we don’t need it feels wrong to me.

I feel like it feeds into the whole entitlement thing and makes me cringe. Sister feels entitled to assistance to the point that she won’t get a job because doing so would cut into her aid. She can make more money through welfare than she could if she got a job.

That makes me crazy if only because I’ve worked since I was sixteen years old, I’ve been paying into the system all these years so that people who WON’T work can cash in on the system.

So maybe we should be getting social security benefits for Olivia if only because Tom and I have paid in for so long and it would be nice if one of our kids benefitted from our hard work.

I don’t know.

What I do know is I’m tired of both my dad and my sister pressuring me to do something I’m not sure I feel right about doing. But hey, my passive-aggressive tendancies pay off in instances like this. I sit there, listening to their ‘logic’, nodding as if I agree and then, when they’re done, I go about my life the way I feel is best. No confrontations, no discomfort, they feel like they’ve been heard and perhaps even changed my mind with their 'thought-provoking' monologues and I continue to do what I want without bothering to justify my choices. In the end, why my family (which includes, Tom, me and the girls) does what it does is really not any of their business.