Blog #2-- Molly yeske

Molly Yeske

Blog #2

Abramsky talks a lot about welfare, poverty and homelessness. I think that she is trying to get us to understand that the welfare system is not helping the recipients at all. These people on welfare get dependent in the system and have no motivation to better themselves. People not only suffer from poverty, but businesses also have to deal with their pay/funding getting cut to. When organizations start losing their funding, they are unable to help people which can lead those people farther in farther in poverty and might eventually lead them to homelessness. With the government not doing well with their finances, it dwindles down to the people and they suffer more. 92 thousand Chicagoans could expect to be homeless during the course of the year meaning that on a given night there could be 21,000 sleeping in impoverished accommodations (Abramksy, 2013).

One thing that is really effected when people are living in poverty is healthcare. People who live in poverty, a lot of them are probably on state paid insurance (Medicaid). A lot of private Dr.’s do not take patients that are on Medicaid, so that person would go without health coverage. A lot of people who live in poverty might also not have enough money to pay for medications. Abramsky states on page 224 that the Affordable Care Act came into effect in 2014 and that now a lot of states won’t continue to cover adults who do not have any kids (2013). They are making the requirements to get state help, pretty strict. For example, my family, we make $80 to much a month to qualify for Medicaid. So then we have to pay almost $600 a month for insurance and still have high copays. When my son had surgery, we became swamped in medical bills and it’s been hard to keep above water. They make it virtually impossible for the middle class to survive without falling into poverty.

With the funding being cut, a lot of people are losing their jobs and can’t afford daily things, which means they can’t afford their bills, and they keep getting father and father behind. A lot of people are being forced to file bankruptcy. The US went from having a few hundred thousand people filing bankruptcy in 1980’s to 2 million people in the mid-2000s (Abramsky, 2013). When the housing collapse happened, it affected people all over the US and sent a lot of people into bankruptcy. People living in poverty, who have had to file bankruptcy can have a hard time getting a loan or people to help them when they are in need because it seems that people are judged and looked upon based on their credit scores, which is sad. Not everyone who files bankruptcy lives in poverty, but a lot of people file due to unforeseeable circumstances and then never can recover themselves.