this is what happened as the expanded medicaid coverage to people who were never intended to qualify for medicaid.
States like Kentucky had had ridiculously high levels of disability claims, as the states began tightening rules, medicare expanded. A friend of mine who works as a psychologist processes disability in Kentucky, the number of people who attempt to deceive the system is quite high... if stupidity in how they went about it was a qualifier, the state could easily triple its disability claims.
That’s so true about the disability scams. In the ‘90s after welfare reform went into effect, a friend’s sister who had never worked had a problem: Her kids were entering their teens. The social worker coached her about how to get onto disability by claiming she was too depressed to work. My friend was annoyed about this because her sister lived in a beautiful apartment (Section 8) while she was working one full time and one part time job to scrape by.
My neighbor’s daughter who got pregnant and dropped out of high school was also “too depressed to work” when her kids were taken away from her for neglect/drug use. I would see her on her parents’ deck sucking down beers and smoking cigarettes while she laughed her head off. She was not too depressed to party and otherwise enjoy her life among the Taxpayer Funded Leisure Class.
I still wonder to what extent welfare reform was a success and how much of it was really a transfer of the burden to disability.