For the month of October, the Reckon Report is focusing on caregiving across the human lifespan, in a series we're calling Cradle to Grave. One of the most common uses of the phrase in English-speaking countries is in reference to the United Kingdom’s public healthcare system, the NHS. From prenatal care to elder care and everything in between, we’ll be looking at America’s caregiving institutions and how they measure up (or don’t) with those of other nations.
If you’re a married person who paid federal taxes before 2017, you might be familiar with the marriage penalty: that married couples without a wide gap between the spouses’ incomes were subject to higher taxes. (That’s a massive simplification, but this isn’t a newsletter about the tax code.) But did you know that there’s another marriage penalty that for some people could cost almost $11,000 per year?
This lesser-known marriage penalty has an outsized impact on disabled people and their partners or spouses, leaving many to make the heart-wrenching choice between getting married or receiving income they rely on. The maximum benefit people receiving Supplemental Security Income – or SSI for short – are entitled to in 2023 is $10,968. Next year’s inflation adjustment will boost payments up to an annual maximum of $11,316. SSI is a means-tested program under the Social Security Administration that provides money to disabled children and adults. Its income limitations are very strict; beneficiaries are not allowed to have more than $2000 in assets aside from their home, car and personal effects. Even life insurance policies can’t be valued at greater than $1,500. Getting cut off from SSI can have disastrous effects, too, like losing Medicaid benefits. Medicaid covers the cost of home health aides for disabled people, so being deprived of that health coverage isn’t just a matter of losing access to your preferred physician or paying a few dollars more for prescriptions at the pharmacy counter.
The result of such strict policies is that many disabled people receiving SSI are effectively barred from any material improvements in their lives. All for $914 a month, which is less than the federal minimum wage and well below the federal poverty line. Being locked out of married life also opens people up to a host of other issues, like navigating hospital visitation, healthcare decisions and funeral arrangements.
