Posted on 04/09/2015 4:44:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the Social Security disability-insurance (SSDI) program heading toward insolvency before the end of next year, lawmakers are looking for reforms to help individuals with disabilities but the capacity to work to return to work. Why it is so hard to get them to do so? Olga Khazan explores the question in a new piece in The Atlantic. Even those awarded benefits for a temporary condition tend to stay on Social Security for the rest of their lives.
It’s a tough but urgent question. The disability program has seen tremendous growth in both costs and the number of beneficiaries in recent decades. Since 1990, the share of the working-age population receiving disability benefits has more than doubled — from about one in 40 individuals to about 1 in 20 today. Spending on SSDI has doubled in real terms since 2000.
Opponents of broader reforms argue that these increases are a natural outcome of demographic and other explained factors and that therefore they are nothing to worry about. Robust research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, however, suggests that the exact opposite.
Researchers find that only some of the increase in SSDI spending was due to aging baby boomers requiring increasing assistance with disability needs, to a greater number of working women becoming insured under the program, and to the Social Security retirement age edging up slightly over the past decade.
About half of the program’s expansion cannot be explained by these demographic factors or changes in the labor force. Moreover, the growth in beneficiaries has occurred at the same time that health outcomes have improved nationwide and jobs have become less physically demanding.
Instead, it appears that as SSDI benefits have become more accessible and more valuable, in terms of how much of a person’s wages they replace,
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
It’s quite the scam up here in Canada. People who are quite capable of working, cashing in for years. I have a brother-in-law who has scammed the system, including disabilities, law suits, adjusting his water meter, etc., for years.
Weren’t we supposed to “Label Them Able” at one time? I seem to recall a huge campaign regarding that.
Near 10 million people on SSDI in 2011. Last time I looked at the SSA website, SSDI and the SSI (which they pay and administer from General Funds) amounted to over 25% of all SSA payments.
SSDI is highly desirable for those not near retirement age. That, coupled with a higher payout than retirement would be makes it a powerful magnet for fraud. Finally, it has become a lucrative business for lawyers who take a percentage of the payout as compensation for litigating against SSA.
You sunset the damned thing in two years. Make everyone re-qualify. That’s the ONLY way to get rid of it. Make it as hard to requalify as it was to qualify in the first place — or harder.
Yep because most qualified by going through lawyers they couldn’t otherwise afford.
they are awarding SSI to illegal and legal immigrants just because they cannot speak English (seriously).
I’m a landlord in the upper end of the bottom feeders on welfare. In all cases their disabilities are enabled by the state. Apparently huge EBT benefits provide enough income from resale of products bought by the card to fund cigarettes, alcoholism and drug use. If you took away the EBT and disability payments they would howl and then have to get jobs and would be forced to decide between shelter, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and eating. We are not responsible for their bad decisions.
I could easily qualify for disability. Although I can’t work at the type employment I could get and nobody wants an old man at the type of desk job I once had I am using my 401 k to buy repossessed trailers and refurbish them for rentals. If the pain becomes intolerable I can lie on the floor or sit in my car and not get fired. I won’t take disability unless I am bedridden.
Cut their arms off and make em dance?
Now I also get a smaller disability benefit through my last employer. Once a year I either get this long questionnaire to gill out along with authorizations so the insurer can get my current medical records. If there is uncertainty about whether I'm disabled, the insurer will send me for an exam by its doctor.
Unlike the insurance carrier, which has limited financial resources and distributes them only to those who need them, the government figures it has this unlimited supply of money. Run out? Get more from the taxpayer and the workers. If that runs out, print more.
Why is this even a question. Cut off their freakin payments. Drastically cut back the categories of “disability” so that unprovable nonsense “disabilities” aren’t a reason to get a government check.
From my own family experience, I have seen that when you cut off the lazy man’s free income, he will grumble but he will find a job. But if you keep handing him money and trying to persuade him to go back to work, he’ll take your money and NEVER go back to work. Unfortunately, the only way to motivate the lazy is to make them face starvation and homelessness.
The big scam that I’ve seen first-hand is deadbeat “parents” getting their kids signed up for SSDI, and then living off of that check. I never understood how or why that’s possible. Get the kid labeled with a learning disorder and cash in!
One set I know of has a child who is partially deaf, they got her on disability and ride out several hundred bucks a month in cash money because of it. Add to that the food stamps and child support, and no one has to work!
Suddenly, the bad backs and such that they were working with for years became their ticket to permanent disability income.
Interesting screen name for someone on disability.
1. Just because you get SSDI as a minor for some learning disability, you don’t get automatically enrolled as disabled at 18. All cases of minors classified as “learning impaired” need review by a board and enrollment in some sort of apprenticeship or job.
How Special Education and Difficulty in School Relate to Getting Disability
http://www.disabilitysecrets.com/mic5.html
2. Require a review of all disability claims after five years, so you can kick off those who are no longer disabled
3. Set up tip lines to report people who are on disability but actually fine, with financial rewards for proven fraud cases. This includes disability pensions for police and firemen.
Arizona ex-police officer runs triathalons
http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/03/arizona-ex-police-officer-on-medical-dis
4. Set up work-fare for the marginally disabled such as the mentally slow and those with “learning disabilities”. They can clean up trash by the side of the road, sort recyclables, maintain the median - put them to part-time work as a condition of receiving benefits unless severely physically disabled.
5. Mandate that those listed as disabled use long term forms of contraception like Norplant. If a girl is considered so impaired she is on disability, she doesn’t get to have a baby.
And people wonder why there’s such an increase in diagnosed learning disorders.
A questionaire to gill out?
Sounds fishy to me.
CC
A hard worker, but big boned.
Get a kid labeled autistic and you've got a long term government check. She told me that less than 10% truly were. The remainder were borderline.
Two-thirds or more of the parents which she visited accepted her visits only because they wanted to keep the government check coming. They had no time to do simple things with the kids which actually helped them such as reading them books, helping them with homework or even something as simple as tossing a Frisbee back and forth at the local park.
They had no money to buy them such inexpensive things as books or crafts. But they all had at least two or three big screen TVs in the house which were constantly blaring plus the latest X-Box, Play Station or equivalent. She told me these type of things for borderline autistic kinds was like providing the best whiskey available to an alcoholic.
Trailer Park Boys.
A perfect example of the pathetic Canadian lifestyle.
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