A Disability Epidemic Among a Railroad’s Retirees

New York Times ^ | September 20, 2008 | Walt Bogdanich

[reaganaut1]

To understand what it’s like to work on the railroad — the Long Island Rail Road — a good place to start is the Sunken Meadow golf course, a rolling stretch of state-owned land on Long Island Sound.

During the workweek, it is not uncommon to find retired L.I.R.R. employees, sometimes dozens of them, golfing there. A few even walk the course. Yet this is not your typical retiree outing.

These golfers are considered disabled. At an age when most people still work, they get a pension and tens of thousands of dollars in annual disability payments — a sum roughly equal to the base salary of their old jobs. Even the golf is free, courtesy of New York State taxpayers.

With incentives like these, occupational disabilities at the L.I.R.R. have become a full-blown epidemic.

Virtually every career employee — as many as 97 percent in one recent year — applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found. Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees, including about 2,000 who retired during that time.

The L.I.R.R.’s disability rate suggests it is one of the nation’s most dangerous places to work. Yet in four of the last five years, the railroad has won national awards for improving worker safety.

[meyer]

I’d like to see a little deeper investigation into those “disabilities”. Could be legit, but could be that the disability pay package is so lucrative and easy to obtain that it’s subject to a great deal of fraud.

[sinanju]

Jeepers! No wonder Sandra Bullock’s college-educated character in “While You Were Sleeping” didn’t mind being a L.I.R.R. ticket-taker.

[driftdiver]

Wonder if its thumb injuries due to too much texting.

[downwdims]

Impressive to make 4 days pay in 1 day at work.

[Dagny&Hank]

Unions, government workers, Democrats, and city folks — with those four combined what more would you expectt.

[hinckley buzzard]

Disability fraud among railway workers has been going on since the 19th century, almost as long as there have been railroads. They called it "railway spine" back then, the usual assortment of vague intractable and unending complaints seen today among disability seekers of various sorts. LIRR sounds like an outlier though, in terms of flat out brazenness.

[OCCASparky]

Oh, trust me--it's amazing the afflictions which civil servants can contract.

One firefighter up here in Boston just got canned after it was discovered that while he was on paid disability for a back injury, he had trained for and entered a bodybuilding competition. And then the organization responsible for investigating the claims "lost" most of the questionable files.

[FlyVet]

Must be nice. I’m rated 50% by the VA and had to give up golf ten years ago. Golf is hard on the back.

[count-your-change]

Shocking? Hardly, failed executives and politicians skim millions of dollars legally so why should anyone be surprised that the retirees take advantage of a willing system.

[TheBattman]

If they are on the golf course, playing and WALKING the course, then they are not so disabled they cannot work. Period.

Disability is one of the Federal entitlement programs that makes me the most mad.

A good friend of mine a few years back became truly disabled. His heart just gave out on him and he ended up with cancer pretty bad. His honest desire was to get back to work and it drove him nuts to sit at home - but he honestly could not work. He was denied SS disability. He had to hire a lawyer to fight it out for him - and finally the disability was approved. Of course - when that happens - the lawyer gets a payment...

And then you hear cases like the ones in this article (and others who I know personally) who are absolute lazy leeches who play the system for all it is worth.

And when you place a call to the authorities - they play “pass the buck” or I have actually heard “it is none of your business”!

Someone please explain how some people can get disability with relatively little verification and effort, while others who truly are completely disabled have to fight tooth and nail to get a penny from the system (and end up paying a lawyer out of what they get).

The system is completely broken.

[Timeout]

The ones who are willing to “bend the rules” know which doctors are willing to play along. Whether it’s workers comp, medicaid, or disability there are doctors willing to attest to whatever the “patient” requires. In the private sector companies hire extensive networks of risk managers to assess these claims. In the public sector, who cares? It’s not their money.

Today, Governor Paterson loudly called on AG Andrew Cuomo to investigate L.I.R.R.’s retired employees (rather than conducting a quiet investigation). By announcing the investigation, he’s given a heads-up to all those “disabled” people. I bet there won’t be many of them on that golf course any time soon. The supposed investigation will last just long enough for the media to lose interest.