How ADA make people monsters

I will not go into too many details on this topic, just say that if there are “rules” people tend to forget the key idea, “spirit” of those rules. People tend to forget what their brains and hearts were used to be used for. They typically rely too much on those rules. As sad as it sounds, this is typically true. For example, Americans with Disability Act (ADA), despite the fact that it was passed to serve needy people, this law does not give the employee and employer any flexibility; instead the evidence suggests the opposite. The intention was excellent and, of course, out of questions, but the implementation many years later is driving people further and further from this intention. Everybody knows that disabled people are not “equally” disabled, they all have different problems; even if there is some classification that supposed to identify some groups of needs, the key point on this is that it is only theoretical. Most people try to “average” out some needs and make recommendations according to the descriptions, unfortunately, transformation of those recommendations into an obligation can be a disaster, because what helps one person can harm another that can be irreversible 3.

 

Moreover, no disabled person wants people to recognize the disability of his/her in a traditional way, because it normally hurts 2,3,4. The traditional view of disability often focuses on a defect or impairment and not on the person himself/herself 5. The ADA states disability as an advantage almost, so disabled person has “privileges” before others. This gives a person often at least weird looks and, as a normal reaction, hate and/or avoidance from others, especially combined with impossibility to explain everybody that “privilege” is not really a privilege. In addition to that, it offends the person 5,8. A lot of times it not only hurts, but this means excluding the person from any society activities, writing him/her off. It often almost feels as the society is burying the person alive, guided by the nice and kind motive “it is good for them, be easy on them” and so on.

 

The ADA offers a protection to disabled people on problems they may encounter during the life like discrimination regarding to the accessing the opportunity to get the “perfect” fitting job for their skills, discrimination at the work place of any kind, arranging appropriate accommodations. The reverse of this “medal” is the fact that, as everybody knows, everything has a price-tag and in this case the cost comes as overly protected rights. It means decreased opportunity for “perfect” job, because despite what the employer says he/she will think about circumstances and attaching the label for everybody to see the “abnormality” or “exclusivity”. Another adverse event is suggested by many researches, and it is the fact that a lot of people are pretending to be disabled and overall in serious health condition in order to get all the government help they can. As a result of this, often, really needy people cannot get a hold of things they were supposed to get, according to this law 1. There are two key reasons for that: the limited resources and the limited ability of the majority of disabled people speak for themselves for many reasons. For example, some of disabled individuals could be not good enough at knowing their rights, they could be not strong enough to “fight” against the bureaucratic machine, or they could be reluctant to the revealing their health condition if it is not apparent.

 

On the other hand, ADA dictates employers such rules that disabled people (or the ones pretending to be disabled) unfireable no matter what. So the individual can be a lousy personality nobody wants to work with, he/she can be a terrible worker, as well; yet, nobody can fire him/her. Furthermore, if the person feels abandoned or something he/she can sue the employer, so the employer see that person as a potential lawsuit even before hiring the individual with declared disability. Even though the employer is denying any discrimination and declaring offering equal opportunity rights for every person applied for the job. The employer will perhaps never get any problems and will only win hiring the disabled person because of his/her skills, but there is a potential chance for the employer to lose a lot of money and reputation, which sometimes is a deciding factor in the hiring process. Another potentially deciding factor for a negative answer to the incumbent is that the individual will ask for accommodations that are not very appealing for the employer to offer in regard to utilizing the money, time, and/or other resources 6,7.

 

The conclusion is simple - ADA was supposed to be a respectable and effective law when it was first publicised. However, since that time a lot of things have happened, a lot of changes took place, besides the fact that no law can consider all possible situations or it will be a huge pile of contradicting statues. Considering all of the above, all of the negative stuff about ADA could be avoided if people live by their heart more than by their rules, which, in fact, not always their particular will.

 

References

1. BustAThief.com. (2010). Disability fraud – disability scam. Retrieved from http://www.bustathief.com/disability-fraud-disability-scam/
2. Diversityworld.com. (2011). The ten commandments of communicating with people with disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.diversityshop.com/store/10comvid.html
3. Hartman, M. (March 2004). People with and without disabilities: Interacting & communicating. Retrieved from http://eeo.gsfc.nasa.gov/disability/publications.html
4. Henry, S.L. (2007). Interacting with people with disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/interact.html
5. Murugami, M.W. (2009). Disability and identity. The Society for Disability Studies, 29(4). . Retrieved from http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/979/1173
6. Olson, W. (July 26, 2010). ADA’s 20th Anniversary. Retrieved from http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/adas-20th-anniversary/
7. Sparks, K. (June 04, 2011). Pros & cons of ADA. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/info_8541954_pros-cons-ada.html
8. Youtube. (November 13, 2010). Stossel affirmative action bake sale. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn48t-X0uNU

Some thoughts about healthcare and money

I cannot stop thinking about it just because I am working in a hospital and even perusing healthcare career studying.
I am officially disabled, fortunatily, I have invisible disability now (thanks God!). I have gotten a job because I do not look like the person who is making living on Government check. In fact, I never received anything from the Government, not even a tax exemption or something. I do not really need any help from the Government, thanks God, I can be useful to the society, and the society pays me back.
The only thing is that I do not want any intrusion in my life. I am getting angry, when I have to pay twice as much as “ordinary” people do. For example, for travel I need to make special arrangements, rent a big car to carry wheelchair, rent wheelchair itself, and so on. On top of it I have to pay ridiculous taxes. My hard earned money which I desperately need myself tom people who, in lots of cases, just do not want to change their lifestyle and keep living on a Government check! Why? It all looks like I have to pay twice just for being alive and relatively well. I want to be able to be nice and do donations like I always did. If those in Government decide to raise my taxes, I will have to forget about it. Just think about surviving. Alternative for me looks very sad: just sit at home, do nothing, think nothing and hope for nothing.

Tamara

I can't stop thinking about her.

This woman from my birth country. Tamara Cheremnova /she is Russian and all this text is in Russian/. She is so strong and unbelievably happy, just kind of abnormal happy for her exact circumstances.

She was born on 1955. Almost right after (she was like about 2-3 year of age) she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. It's terribly scary diagnosis by itself. But in addition to that she was given another one, even more terrible for her. She was named as retarded person. When she was 6 years old her parents just give up on her, because they couldn't give her appropriate care and so on. She was put in special school where she wasn't given any basic education at all. She didn't know how to write, how to read, basically she just didn't know anything by default.

And what made it really terrible for her, she was put in environment where she just couldn't get any education. Nobody really cared about those kids, nobody really tried to give them anything useful, anything to help them, they weren't feeling love. It's terrible thing, terrible. Love is what helps people to live basically. And they didn't have that.

But Tamara got real lucky because every terrible environment has little room for exclusion. There was one “crazy” teacher. Everybody just made fun of her like she was crazy. She tried to do for kids what they were not given by society – love. This “crazy” teacher taughtTamara some basic things, she read lots of books for Tamara. That was how Tamara got to the point of being a writer. But was still in that environment she needed to deal with. There was no “fairy tail” for her.

Even more then that she was kind of bullied by others (her "care givers"!!) all the time. Her basic rights were kind of stolen at that point. I really don't know and Tamara is telling same, even she doesn't know it for sure, how she surviving all that.

Well, one day she could get the second opinion and that most scary diagnosis was a history for her. She wasn't retarded any more, that “crazy” teacher actually helped Tamara to get that.

But what drove Tamara? What made her stay alive? She is a writer. She writes children books, she can't do it herself sometimes because of tremors and sudden moves but there are some wonderful people helping her. Now she is becoming kind of famous, but people who reads her books, people who actually making her famous don't really know that she is disabled. In their eyes she is just a wonderful person with big talent. That what she actually wanted all her previous life.

But what makes me real sad that she is still asking herself “why I'm here?” “who really needs me?” “who will ever appreciate what I do?”. Those are kind of questions lots of people asking themselves. The difference is that she really feeling like it. There is no point of light. Nothing. Just empty space.

I really understandf that because I was there for too long. Right now I found a oplace on Earth for my soul, I'm trying to find myself in this World. Identify myself. But her..............

I don't know the answer to any of those questions. I'm really afraid to tell her anything, because I'm in tears now and I don't want to burst into tears in front of her.

She is still in between the worlds of "nothing" and "happy". "Happy" is a really state of mind. And she decided to be happy. She decided............But is she?