Monday, October 24, 2005

The Working Poor

Searching on the internet, you can find a great debate as to whether or not the working poor even exist. I find this all very interesting. Yes the statistics can be skewed to include part time workers and those who are younger than 18, but I do know that they exist and it has hit all to close to home for us. My mother, who is over 60, but not old enough to collect social security or medicare, falls into the working poor. Add to this that she has type 1 diabetes and no health insurance. Until recently, she has been very fortunate to have had little or no complications with her diabetes for the past 40 years. She is working full time in a low paying job and because of her age and lack of experience, doesn't have much hope of gaining a much higher paying job. There seems to be little or no help out there for her with her medical expenses - now if she didn't work at all, she might be able to get some help, but because she is trying to support herself - there is not much help. I also find the government's ideas of helping people interesting. On one hand they have supplied junkies with clean syringes, but the diabetic must pay high prices to get them. Ironic isn't it? It seems that our government "help" says that if you are motivated to help yourself, they are not motivated to help you succeed. We are in the process of figuring out what our options are and praying that her health can maintain some sense of stability for a little longer.

1 comment:

Gem said...

My mother sometimes worked 5 jobs to keep us in clothes and food when I was a teenager and we still qualified for foodstamps, they can't tell me there is no working poor! I totally understand where your mother is, luckily (actually, providentially) mine has been able to work for the local hospital and then later in a county office so that she had health coverage (note, I didn't say good coverage, lol) and also got KPERS, the Kansas government workers' pension fund. She won't retire rich, but I'm glad she isn't having to work so hard as she did when we were kids.

(I dropped by from your url on the COC homeschooling Yahoo group)