Posted on 09/09/2012 6:33:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Today, we're going to demonstrate that the policies of multiple agencies of the U.S. federal government are responsible for enabling criminal disability fraud in the United States, with the cost of the fraud accelerating the pending insolvency of Social Security's Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which will put the program's legitimate beneficiaries at high risk of having their benefits cut after the fund has been exhausted.
Current projections indicate that the Social Security trust fund for disability will be fully depleted in 2016, just four years from the present. The projections from the previous year had indicated that would not happen until 2018. The large shift in the timing of the projected trust fund depletion toward the present in just a year's time indicates a strongly deteriorating fiscal situation for the government "safety net" program.
In Part 1 of our series, we discovered that the U.S. Social Security Administration has effectively established a "no-challenge" policy for disability insurance claims made by applicants over the age of 50, which allows these individuals to obtain Social Security disability benefits far more easily than individuals Age 49 or younger. This arbitrary policy is what enables these individuals to receive Social Security disability insurance payments, even though they might not otherwise be able to obtain those benefits if they were held to the same standards as those under Age 50.
We observe the likely greater incidence of disability fraud as we more closely examine the surge in the number of Social Security disability beneficiaries in the years since 2007, which coincide with the Great Recession. Here, we found that approximately 695,000 more individuals have been added to the nation's government disability rolls during this time than the level that would be consistent with those of pre-Great Recession years.
The chart above, showing the number of "surplus" or "excess" Social Security disability beneficiaries added in each year since 2007, indicates that the recession is the driving factor behind the increased number of individuals obtaining government disability payments, as the timing of the surge coincides with the expiration of government unemployment insurance benefits for individuals who were negatively impacted by the economic contraction, which officially ran from December 2007 through June 2009. The nation's sluggish economic recovery accounts for the decline in the number of surplus or excess Social Security disability program beneficiaries measured in 2011.
That connection between unemployment insurance benefits and disability insurance benefits brings us to where outright fraud is taking place today:
As many as 117,000 Americans simultaneously collect unemployment benefits and federal disability each year, a form of double-dipping that investigators say costs taxpayers $850 million annually and should be ended.
To understand why such "double-dipping" constitutes fraud, please note the following general requirements for each program:
While there can be some small overlap in the detailed eligibility requirements for these programs that would legitimately allow a handful of individuals to receive benefits from both simultaneously, the vast majority of individuals currently receiving both unemployment insurance benefit payments and disability insurance payments do not fall within that narrow category and are therefore committing acts of fraud. In general, legitimate beneficiaries of these social safety net programs can draw funds from one program, or the other, but not both at the same time.
That multiple government agencies are involved in enabling this form of fraud is confirmed because the U.S. Department of Labor is responsible for administering the unemployment insurance program, while the Social Security Administration administers the Disability Insurance program. But worse than that is the reason why the fraud has been allowed to continue:
The reason for the double-spending, investigators at the Government Accountability Office reported this week, is good old-fashioned lack of communication.
Put simply, the Labor Department that funds unemployment benefits and the Social Security Administration that funds disability payments don't compare notes, leavings tens of thousands of Americans each month to collect two checks from a stretched-thin government treasury.
It would seem that the bureaucrats and politicians who are responsible for overseeing these programs learned nothing from the failure of government agencies to share information among themselves that enabled the criminal terrorist murders of 2,996 Americans on 11 September 2001 to proceed unchallenged.
This time however, the Government Accountability Office's report indicates that the annual savings that might be realized by ending this kind of fraud adds up to $850 million.
That's a savings of roughly 1 dollar out of each $1400 that is currently projected to be consumed in the nation's projected deficit of 1.21 trillion dollars for 2012! And it would be painless, because the people who are honestly playing by the rules would not be affected!
This is exactly the sort of thing that should be a no-brainer for a fiscally responsible politician - it's as close to low-hanging fruit as there is to be found anywhere in the U.S. federal government's budget. We wonder if any political candidate will rise to the occasion of acting to end the government's practices and policies that enable such costly fraud.
Fixed it. They get around better than I do and spend all my tax dollars taking vacations and buying new cars.
Light bulb moment. I know a person who applied for SSI during Bush but was rejected. She hops from one temp job to another so between times she gets unemployment. It's a vicious circle, unemployment runs out, gets a temp job, temp job runs out, gets back on unemployment, rinse and repeat. Out of the blue, last year she was approved for SSI and received tens of thousands of dollars for retroactive payments for her and their now grown kids back to the first application. Now, it's party time for them with new cars, vacations, body piercings and tatoos, and shopping out the wahzoo. Disability, my aunt fanny.
Yeah! . . . . . That's the ticket . . . . . They're . . Uh . . . They're “Shop-a-holics”, they can't help themselves. The American Psychology Association approved Shop-A-Holicism right after they declared homosexuality to be normal.
Not too comforting to know when I can (legitimately) go on SSD in four years, the system will be busted...
Not that it’s necessarily the target — work provides that sense of purpose & accomplishment I’d probably miss, and the 401-K will be there (unless the Feds screw with that).
I have another story:
Female, married 21 years old.
She has managed to bamboozle the state officials into thinking that she is TOO STUPID to hold a job. IF she manages to continue fooling them for for 3 years total, she will stay on such ‘disability’ until she turns 65 & goes onto soc sec. Since she has BARELY worked in her entire life (so far), she will have the minimum social security.
She is currently getting paid $2100 a month. That is equivilant to $12.13 per hour, 40 hours a week. Where I live, $12.00 is a decent job, particularly for anyone with minimum skills.
Because I don’t know how close to 22 she is, let’s do some math:
Consider that she is 22 & will have such disability payments until she is 65. That equals 43 years. 43 years times 12 months equals 516 months of payments.
Consider that the value of those payments doesn’t even get a single ‘cost of living’ increase.
516 payments times $2100 per month equals $1,083,600. ONE MILLION, Eighty Three Thousand, Six Hundred dollars. TAXPAYER DOLLARS!!!!
Then she turns 65 & goes on what is left of ‘social security.’
I have never heard of ‘being too stupid to hold a job’ as a category for SSDI, but this woman is pulling that off.
Other members of the immediate family also draw money from the Feds/state , so the current intake of $$$ for the whole group is $9400 a month.
I find this more than disgusting & very disturbing.
I am trying to find a state legislator who will look into this for me. I want it stopped.
I scanned the article but did not notice one other important issue.
According to my SS Statement, my SS Disability payment would be larger than the normal SS Early Retirement payment I can get at age 62.
If I could afford to retire before age 62, that means I have a powerful financial incentive to fake, or exaggerate, a disability.
Please note...
The formula for calculating a SSDI payment is really complex, so this might not be the case for everyone.
There is a sort of underground railroad for illegal immigrants. They start off in, let’s say NYC, then move westward via family contacts, collecting all the merry way.
They know all the ins and outs, and I don’t know of any incentives for any government entity to go and check - you know there’d be a hue and cry if there was any sort of bounty or bonus associated with catching someone.
My wife used to work the receiving desk at the ER. Patients or relatives would pull out identity after identity until one of them worked getting them into the system.
It's a welfare scam without pesky social workers - and it'll bring down the system faster than Obama can say furious - or wink and nod at the press.
there is a MASSIVE pool of lawyers who focus on this type of law.
You can even get disability for eating your self into obesity and all those related consequences.
it is all a wink and a nod. the administrative judge is a lawyer who will soon be hired or practicing that law privatly.
starving recent law grads find it easy money.
It’s the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.