Medical costs and lost productivity

Is it the same for people with obvious diseases and disabilities, I wonder, but having a long-term "invisible" illness, I feel constant pressure to prove that I'm really sick and not able to work. I'm made to feel that I'm a burden; a medical cost and a lost productivity (benefit) cost - not a human being who is unable to take care of myself and thus worthy of some help. In a dignified manner: I'm not even asking for charity, because I paid enough into the system in the past. But all we are, it seems, is someone who doesn't work, ergo a nuisance, a leech.

When you're ill, the physical toll of having to fight for whatever scraps one can get is bad enough. The mental one is far greater. Both hinder the chronic sick patient's ability to cope with or even partially recover from their symptoms.

We are "damned if we do, damned if we don't", truly.

UPDATE: Having read, "My other goal is to also stop the medical discrimination. In other words, if you have cancer you are taken seriously but if you have an invisible illness, TOO BAD." So, I'm not the only one to notice, clearly.

"The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life . . . the children; those who are in the twilight of life . . . the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life . . . the sick, the needy, and the handicapped."

---Hubert Humphrey