All posts tagged: disabled

Trump’s Medicaid cuts threaten to upend families caring for disabled relatives

Trump’s Medicaid cuts threaten to upend families caring for disabled relatives

Published by Sam Flores

Now the wage she receives from the state is set to drop by more than 25%, down to $23.69 an hour. “I can’t absorb that,” Gonce said. “How am I supposed to keep paying my bills?” Advocates say paying relatives as caregivers doesn’t just help families — it can save the government money. Michele Gregory and her husband both care full time for their 31-year-old son, Nick, who has a rare and severe form of epilepsy and profound developmental disabilities, requiring continuous supervision. After they pulled him out of a day program and took over caregiving around 2017 at their home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Gregory said, Nick’s health improved and his hospitalizations dropped from about four times a year to once every 12 to 18 months. “That saved Medicaid somewhere between $300,000 to $400,000 a year,” she said. Michele Gregory and her husband work as full-time caregivers for their 31-year-old son, Nick.Courtesy Michele Gregory With Maryland’s new wage cuts and a 60-hour cap on the total number of caregiving hours a family can be …

Texas man who experts said was intellectually disabled is executed for retired professor’s killing

Texas man who experts said was intellectually disabled is executed for retired professor’s killing

Published by Sam Flores

A man who experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982 for the killing of a retired 77-year-old college professor. Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8.11pm local time Thursday following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, hours after a divided Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disability claims. The execution followed a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby’s attorneys in a bid to spare his life after the nation’s high court lifted a stay hours earlier. Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a 77-year-old retired professor from Texas Christian University who prosecutors say was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped around her face. The execution was the 600th in Texas since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. Busby’s execution had been in doubt after the 5th U.S. Circuit …

I disabled these 5 Android defaults and my phone finally feels like mine

I disabled these 5 Android defaults and my phone finally feels like mine

Published by skeptic

As I dig around in my Pixel’s settings app, I realize I’ve never really chosen any of them, really. Most of the settings on your Android phone are given to you by Google as defaults, just sitting there and doing things in the background that we never really think to question. So I started turning some of them off. Five settings later, my phone feels noticeably cleaner, less cluttered, and maybe a bit quieter overall. Here’s what I found and what changed after I switched each one off. Related Your Android Phone’s Default Settings Are a Privacy Nightmare—Here’s What to Change Right Now Your Android’s out-of-the-box settings aren’t doing you any favors when it comes to privacy. App suggestions in the dock and app drawer Don’t let Google decide what’s in your dock The Pixel launcher watches how you use your phone and fills the bottom dock with apps it thinks you’ll want to use next. Most people’s docks, though, are full of pinned apps, so they never see this feature in action. It’s running, …

Royal Caribbean ‘unfairly’ charged me over booking for disabled son | Money

Royal Caribbean ‘unfairly’ charged me over booking for disabled son | Money

Published by Sam Flores

In November 2024, I booked a cruise for my wife, myself and our severely disabled son for this July. I’d booked well in advance to ensure an accessible cabin for my son. At home, he needs round-the-clock care from a rota of eight carers, so we made extra bookings for three to accompany him. Because the care team has other commitments, I couldn’t confirm their names at the time of booking and was told to do so by this April, when the balance had to be paid. I duly did so, and was told that I needed to pay a £75 fee for each name change, and that the care team would each lose the $325 (£239) onboard credit that was part of the original booking. I then received a notice informing me that the wheelchair-accessible riverboat excursion I had booked for us all was non-transferable, so would be cancelled and refunded for the three care workers. Since the riverboat trip is no longer listed, I can’t rebook them. I have complained to no avail. …

New bill to stop ‘claim sharks’ chasing after disabled vets : NPR

New bill to stop ‘claim sharks’ chasing after disabled vets : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

AFP via Getty Images and Getty Images/Collage by Emily Bogle/NPR A new bipartisan bill in Congress aims to curb what lawmakers say are predatory collection practices by so-called “claim sharks” — companies that charge disabled veterans large sums for help claiming benefits with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and two of their Republican colleagues, would prevent companies from using auto-dialers to call federal agencies. Pappas said the legislation was prompted by a 2025 NPR investigation of Trajector Medical that revealed how the Florida company used auto-dialer software to access a VA benefits hotline meant for veterans. The company would dial into the system to monitor benefit payments for thousands of its clients, often without their knowledge, and then automatically send the veteran a bill if their payments increased. “It’s crazy what these guys are trying to get away with,” Pappas told NPR. “To use a robo-dialer to make multiple calls to government lines and then just send veterans a bill whenever their eligibility …

Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families

Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families

Published by Sam Flores

Even a glance at Shy’tyra Burton’s life reveals her need for the sort of federal government assistance that helps disabled Americans stay in their homes. Born two months prematurely into a poor family in Philadelphia, unable to breathe or swallow without tubes and largely confined to medical facilities until age 4, Burton was diagnosed with a litany of developmental and intellectual disabilities that left her with an IQ below 70. She persevered and graduated from a high school special education program, then attempted community college. But she struggled to grasp basic tasks and information. She couldn’t get hired, including at McDonald’s. After multiple medical and psychological evaluations and a hearing before a judge, the federal government approved her for the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides a basic income to those with severe disabilities and to indigent older people. For Burton, now 22, the $994 monthly benefit is lifesaving but not enough to completely support herself on her own. So, like many SSI recipients, she has continued to live with her father, who makes around …

I disabled these Windows services Microsoft recommends – and everything works better

I disabled these Windows services Microsoft recommends – and everything works better

Published by skeptic

Your Windows PC does more than just run your apps. It also tracks usage, shares updates, and quietly reports data back to Microsoft. All of this is made possible by a bunch of background services that are constantly running. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized a lot of these so-called helpful services were doing things that weren’t really necessary, or in some cases, only benefiting Microsoft. So I decided to turn them off, and honestly, I’m glad I did because my PC felt lighter and far less cluttered than before. Disabling the following services on your PC is easy enough. Open the Windows Services app, double-click the service and change the Startup type to Disabled. Click Stop if the service is running and hit Apply followed by OK. Related I freed up 6 GB of RAM on my PC with these simple tweaks Most of your RAM isn’t used by what you run, but by what you forget is running. Delivery Optimization Saving Microsoft’s servers at your expense Delivery Optimization …

‘I Denied Boarding a Flight Because I’m Disabled’

‘I Denied Boarding a Flight Because I’m Disabled’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Marissa Bode is calling out Southern Airways after she claims that she was denied boarding a flight because of her wheelchair, despite her manager checking with the company beforehand. The Wicked actress, who played Nessarose on the big screen adaptations, took to TikTok on Thursday to share her frustrations, saying, “I was denied boarding a flight because I’m disabled. I wish that were clickbait. I wish that were false, but that is what happened.” Bode explained that Southern Airways is “extremely, extremely small” and that she had to use the airline as her connecting flight due to limited options heading to her destination in a small Pennsylvania town. While switching between flights, the actress said she was having trouble finding her virtual ticket before boarding the Southern Airways plane. Once she got to the gate, that’s when she asked two employees for assistance. However, they instead told her she wasn’t allowed to board due to being in a wheelchair. “So I got to the gate, and I was like, ‘Hey, could you help me locate …

I disabled one hidden Windows setting and freed up CPU performance instantly

I disabled one hidden Windows setting and freed up CPU performance instantly

Published by skeptic

If you’ve spent a ton of cash on a CPU for gaming or content creation purposes, you’ll want to get all of the power you can from this piece of hardware. Before you jump into Ryzen Master or Intel Extreme Tuning to overclock it, there may be a Windows setting you can enable that gives you a significant boost in daily use. While most Windows PCs run on the “Balanced” hardware setting, switching to High Power can improve overall performance and smoothness. But there’s another, hidden option that pushes your CPU to the limit without overclocking. Ultimate Performance Mode keeps your CPU running at 100%, making gaming and creation tools run smoother than ever before. Related I thought my CPU was maxed out until I tweaked these BIOS settings A few BIOS tweaks made my PC feel brand new without a hardware upgrade. Unlocking your CPU’s potential There’s an incredibly good chance that if you access your Control Panel –> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options, you’re not going to see the option for the …

I disabled this hidden setting and got a faster GNOME desktop

I disabled this hidden setting and got a faster GNOME desktop

Published by skeptic

There’s a special kind of annoyance reserved for systems that aren’t technically slow, but still feel … busy. Like your computer is constantly doing something just out of sight, breathing a little too loudly in the background. That was my setup for months. Apps opened fine, nothing crashed, and CPU usage looked normal at a glance. And yet, the whole experience had this faint, persistent hesitation. Not enough to blame anything specific, but enough to make me slightly irritated every time I sat down. Turns out, it wasn’t my imagination. It was GNOME Tracker quietly chewing through resources in the background, indexing files I didn’t need indexed, at times I didn’t ask for. And once I dealt with it, my system stopped feeling haunted. Not faster, exactly, but finally at peace. The system felt busy, not slow When tools say “fine” but your brain says “nope” Screenshot: Roine Bertelson/MUO This is the worst kind of performance issue to troubleshoot, because every tool you trust insists everything is fine. CPU usage behaves, RAM isn’t screaming, and …