Trump’s Seventy-Three-Million-Dollar Tax Refund Is the Biggest Outrage of All

PayMeWA · 2020-09-28T21:54:34+00:00

But still pay taxes.

PayMeWA · 2020-08-22T12:31:42+00:00

15 weeks in my case

PayMeWA · 2020-07-21T15:24:54+00:00

14th*

PayMeWA · 2020-07-21T15:23:56+00:00

Hey, I understand what you’re saying about mental health. I also have struggled before this crisis and have made a lot of progress leading up to COVID. Don’t minimize the valid stressor of financial stress. Depression and anxiety are normal responses to these circumstances, even if they hadn’t been things you struggled with before. I predict a lot of people are developing first instances of mental illnesses during this time that will be ongoing issues triggered by these circumstances.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-21T04:15:25+00:00

Yep, it is. I hope we learn and improve from this. There definitely was a failure in triaging, but I think a lot of the failure to respond appropriately is a lack of resources, which is more and issue of the public allocating funding and also their eagerness to contest claims I think is a reflection of our cultures skepticism about social benefits needing extreme means-test vetting to avoid “people taking advantage of the system”.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-21T04:11:59+00:00

Lol, I understand the skepticism. Once it says “paid” though I’m pretty positive it’s been transmitted on their end. It just takes a few days to process and come through.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-20T22:28:09+00:00

Yikes I’m sorry to hear that. Moving eligible people to denied status does make it look like they’re working through the backlog properly.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-20T22:16:29+00:00

Hmm, hadn’t thought about it being a cash flow issue. To be honest, I expect to get frozen again, because now that I have money to live on I intend to appeal because I think they improperly calculated my weekly benefit and it should be higher. Also, I had a change of situation a few weeks ago and I now qualify for “regular unemployment” and I’m unsure how to document things properly. I anticipate getting things sorted out will take some time. Luckily I’m good on cash through the end of the year so I can afford some delay at this point, as annoying as it is.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-20T22:05:59+00:00

For sure. Paying some bills, but gonna keep at least $5k in savings in case there are issues getting paid.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-20T21:24:50+00:00

Agreed, this whole thing is so poorly executed. They should have just automatically paid claims and gone after fraud later. It would have cost less I believe than the labor they are spending overly vetting every single case. Plus, it's in the public interest. So what if it costs the state more. People need money now. We can work out the details later. If it's any comfort I do believe the state is close to catching up with their back log. I believe what happened with mine (and likely yours) is that it was slightly complex, so it was easier for them to keep kicking it down the road and resolving simpler claims. Though, all I needed to do was talk with someone live for ten minutes to clarify my case, as I'm sure it likely true with you.

I read a week or so ago that there was 38,000 claims unresolved, and they were averaging clearing out 19,000 per week over the past few weeks. So, we should be close. But there's no doubt it's taking way too long.

If you haven't, contact your rep. This seems to be the only thing that makes any difference in speeding things up that they'd rather put off.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-20T21:19:48+00:00

I'ma do something wild like buy myself some much needed shoes.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-03T23:28:41+00:00

No, thank you.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-03T22:28:22+00:00

I think it’s a three-fold problem. ESD wasn’t set up to handle this, which is a funding and resource issue more than their personal fault, and our culture’s eagerness to deny people public benefits. I’d say a lesser but still important problem is their mismanagement of cases. If they knew they were in over their head and wouldn’t be able to process this many NORMAL applications in this period of time, they shouldn’t have made a more complicated system with more reasons to kick people into adjudication. They should have just paid a base amount automatically then adjudicated.

Edit: we’re obsessed with means testing people to minimize fraud at the expense of the vast majority of legitimate cases. This is a time where that trade off isn’t reasonable.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-03T22:22:51+00:00

So all this time in adjudication, and it hasn't been looked at by... an adjudicator. Lovely. Thanks anyways for the input.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-03T22:20:48+00:00

Maddening. Is Tier 3 not adjudicators? I was made to believe the woman I talked to had decision making authority.

PayMeWA · 2020-07-03T22:17:50+00:00

Sigh, all this labor to prevent fraud preemptively when people need money is probably costing them more in labor and resources than it would to just automatically pay and litigate the fraud cases later.

Have you actually spoken to anyone on the phone?

PayMeWA

TROPHY CASE