A Long Hiatus and a Big Fuck You

I'm back after a break of ten months.  I had my reasons for not posting during this time, the main one being that I am concerned about how my postings might be (mis)used against me by my disability insurance company to argue that I'm not disabled.  Multiple doctors say I'm disabled, I have several chronic conditions that make it impossible to carry out the activities of a full-time job, but if all you know about me is a few snapshots of my life as revealed on this blog, you might get the wrong impression about the entirety of my life and how my conditions limit my activities.

I've read about the underhand practices of private disability insurance companies and how they've used snapshots of people's lives in public to cut off benefits.  Policies are written and the laws have been made in such a way as to benefit the insurance company over the policy holder; even after a person demonstrates permanent disability repeatedly (right now, they want proof every four months), the company can discontinue benefits with little notice and just on the basis of possibility.  The burden is on the insured to show that the company acted implausibly when it stopped benefits.  Insurance companies hire people to conduct surveillance on those receiving benefits, and the disabled have had their benefits cut when the company produces a photographs showing the person carrying a grocery bag, or an update from social media describing an activity that the beneficiary engaged in once for a few minutes.  Even when beneficiaries produce evidence that these snapshots are just that--tiny pieces that don't capture the overall limitations present in a disabled person's life--the courts have backed the insurance companies on the grounds that the snapshots raise reasonable suspicions.  Those reasonable suspicions are all that's necessary.  So you can see why I'd be hesitant to post things about my life.  On this blog, you get snapshots of me doing--cooking, gardening, et cetera--and thinking.  But you don't see all the down time where I'm sitting in a chair in pain, recovering from fifteen minutes in the garden or standing in the kitchen.   Nor do I tell you about the pain I experience or the medications I must take every day to be able to engage in that fifteen minutes of activity.  Generally, I don't want to tell you about those things unless they themselves are the subject of the post.  But publicly providing these snapshots leaves me vulnerable.

Re-starting this blog is my fuck-you to overly-intrusive and deliberately misleading disability insurance companies that try to wriggle out of their responsibilities to people who have paid for the service the companies promised to provide.  I won't be silenced. 

I am going to take some reasonable precautions, however.  I'm going to change some of the identifying information that appeared in this blog.  And I'll continue to refuse to provide the url for my blog to the insurance company (yes, indeed, they did ask during the latest round of re-qualifying for benefits).  This is my blog that I use to express my personal and political views;  it's none of their business, and giving them my url (or not publishing at all) would inhibit my ability to express my views.  What appears here is not relevant to the question of whether or not I am disabled.  If they have questions about my disability, they can consult my doctors, look at the medications I must take to carry out basic life activities, and the results of medical tests I have taken over the years showing concrete evidence corroborating what I and my doctors have told them about my conditions.  So---yeah, I'm back.  Next time:  back to pictures of flowers and insects, and an explanation of what's been going on in my life:  major changes on the homesteading front.

[gif source: http://awesomegifs.com/2014/01/i-just-want-to-flip-you-all-of-the-middle-fingers/ ]