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ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Disability can come out of nowhere. Now, so do increased costs.<\/p>\n
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According to the Social Security Administration, 1-in-4 people over the age of 20 will become disabled before reaching retirement age. For many, attempting to access the care they need can be financially crippling.<\/p>\n
One of those people is Orange County resident\u00a0Coleman Watson. He spends three hours a day re-learning how to speak and read.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people learn with A, B, C, D but in my mind I learn only sounds,\u201d says Watson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back in 2020,\u00a0he was only 41 when he suffered a stroke that injured 75% of his brain. At the time, he was a successful\u00a0attorney with his own firm, but he lost all that\u00a0and is\u00a0now practicing his speech by reading from the old versions of the\u00a0Florida bar exam\u00a0is as close as he gets to a courtroom.<\/p>\n
Watson was diagnosed with a speech disorder called\u00a0Aphasia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like you\u2019re on the tip of your tongue to say a certain word, but you can\u2019t remember and you can\u2019t say it with the right sounds,\u201d said\u00a0Watson. He also has Apraxia, which prevents him from saying the words he wants to say correctly and consistently.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life is totally different now than it was before,\u201d said Watson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watson assumed since his doctor declared him disabled and he had insurance,\u00a0it would be no problem getting the help he needed to get his life back on track. But that wasn\u2019t the case as he capped his speech therapy coverage in just a month and was denied disability, leaving him to pay $900 dollars an hour for therapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to file bankruptcy because there was no way to pay all the medical bills that I needed,\u201d\u00a0said Watson. Luckily for him, his parents paid for him to go to a private speech therapy school, but he knows many are not that lucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost of that was a little more than $100,000 dollars just to talk again,\u201d said Watson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is part of what inspired him to make a documentary of his experience of becoming disabled and navigating the struggles that come with it. Reclaiming the voice he lost \u2014 while trying to help others.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver 27 times I called the social security office and I never ever got a real person to help me and I thought you know this is crazy so I want people to know how it feels and also how it works for the system,\u201d said Watson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watson is still waiting for help\u00a0when all he really wants to do is get back to living his life\u00a0doing things he loves, like walking his dog. Hoping to one day get back the life he used to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also want to get back to law very soon,\u201d said Watson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He feels more hopeful about it now,\u00a0as after two and half years of waiting they finally approved him for disability benefits last month,\u00a0although he still hasn\u2019t received it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think there was anyone to help, but I feel better about it,\u201d said Watson.\u00a0\u200b<\/p>\n
According to the Social Security Administration, at the beginning of 2019, Social Security paid an average monthly disability benefit of about $1,234 to all disabled workers. Which is barely enough to keep them above the 2018 poverty line. The SSA says they give disability benefits to about 9 million people, which is just a fraction of Americans who live with disabilities.\u00a0\u200b<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Disability can come out of nowhere. Now, so do increased costs. What You Need To Know Many people relying on disability coverage are facing a finacial burden trying to access care A local resident is making a documentary\u00a0and navigating the struggles that come with it At the beginning of 2019, Social …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36132"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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