by Chris Black
First you need your failed PCR Covid Test. Then you get a certificate from a friendly doctor for long covid problems. Cha Ching, Baby. I Can’t Breathe. Here’s your check, monthly, forever.
Laura Ulrich, 59, was laid off in January from her job managing the distribution of coins in the Baltimore area for an armored car company. She spent the past week hoping that a summer of contacting officials in Maryland was going to bear fruit and more than $14,000 in unemployment insurance would finally land.
“It’s becoming so frustrating. It’s wearing on me. It’s wearing on my blood pressure. I can just feel it,” Ulrich said.
On Saturday, after Bloomberg News raised her case with the office of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, $11,200 finally landed in her bank account.
Ulrich’s happy moment came after months of frustrating encounters with a vital but occasionally cruel pillar of the economic safety net, experiences shared by many of the 8.4 million Americans who remained unemployed in August. Their ordeal highlights how the debate over whether supplemental benefits have kept people home and held back the job-market recovery often misses just how difficult securing aid in the first place can be for applicants.