America's Growing Social Security Disability Problem

RCM ^ | 05/15/2013 | Richard Burkhauser

[SeekAndFind]

The latest Social Security Administration data document that Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) rolls reached a record high of 8.85 million in March 2013, an increase of 1.6 million or 21 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007.

This recession-induced growth exacerbates the long time trend in SSDI program growth that has resulted in its real expenditures increasing sevenfold, from $18 billion (2010 dollars) in 1970 to $128 billion in 2010, a trend the CBO reports will result in program insolvency as early as 2016.

This long running disability epidemic, which hit its pandemic stage in the aftermath of the 2007 recession, has almost nothing to do with a decline in the overall health of working age Americans or in the severity of their health-based impairments. Rather, it is primarily the consequence of fundamental flaws in the SSDI program and its administration which have increasingly made it a long term unemployment program rather than the last resort transfer program for those unable to work due to their health-based impairments that Congress intended it to be. These flaws become most evident during severe during economic downturns but will remain long after we recover from the Great Recession.

[3Fingas]

Disability pays a lot more than unemployment. So, recipients like it.

Disability takes people officially off the unemployment roles. So socialist egomaniacs like it.

Win-win for the lazy and the inept.

[Verginius Rufus]

Non-disabled people collecting disability checks are more likely to vote Democrat. So every reason for the current administration to encourage this.

[Wurlitzer]

Just another implementation of Cloward & Piven.

It worked to nearly bankrupt NYC and looks like it will work quite well at the Federal government level.

[Menehune56]

Check the yellow pages for lawyers who hawk their record in winning disability claims. Apparently it’s quite a lucrative specialty.

[Biggirl]

Or has them working part-time.

[kabar]

Congress will solve the problem by moving "assets" from the SSTF to the SSDI Trust Fund. The result will be that SSTF will go broke earlier than 2035/6. In fact, it will mean that the deficit will increase because the General Fund must borrow the money to redeem the SS T-bills.

SS has been running in the red since 2010 and will continue to do unless reformed.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[GOPJ]

What percent of Detroit is ‘disabled’? More than half?

[glorgau]

What Social Security Trust Fund?

No such thing exists.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk