Posted on 04/03/2013 6:44:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The government in Britain recently did something interesting.
It asked everyone receiving an “incapacity benefit” — through a disability program slowly being phased out under new reforms — to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients (878,000 people) didn’t even bother and dropped out of the program rather than be examined. Of those tested, more than half (55 percent) were found fit for work, and a quarter were found fit for some work.
But that’s Britain, where there’s a long tradition of gaming the dole. Americans would never think of taking advantage of the taxpayers or misleading the government. Well, except for the couple of dozen people who have pleaded guilty to scamming the Long Island Rail Road’s federal disability system in a $1 billion fraud scheme. A billion bucks would pay for a lot of White House tours.
Though hardly isolated, the LIRR scandal is an obvious black-and-white case of criminality. The real problem resides in a grayer area.
In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of some kind, 0.65 percent of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64 were receiving Social Security disability-insurance payments. Fifty years later, in a much healthier America, that number has grown nearly nine-fold to 5.6 percent.
In 1960, 134 Americans were working for every officially recognized disabled worker. Five decades later that ratio fell to roughly 16 to 1.
Some defenders of the status quo say these numbers can be explained by the entry of women into the U.S. workforce, the aging of baby boomers, and the short-term spike in need that came with the recession.
No doubt those are significant factors. But not nearly so significant as to explain why the number of people on disability has been doubling every 15 years (while the average age of recipients has gone down) or why such a huge proportion of claim injuries can’t be corroborated by a doctor.
Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health notes in his recent book A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic that 29 percent of the 8.6 million Americans who received Social Security disability benefits at the end of 2011 cited injuries involving the “musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue.” Fifteen percent claimed “mood disorders.”
It’s almost impossible, Eberstadt writes, “for a medical professional to disprove a patient’s claim that he or she is suffering from sad feelings or back pain.” And that’s assuming a doctor wants to disprove the claim.
In an illuminating and predictably controversial exposé for This American Life, NPR’s Planet Money team tried to figure out why, since 2009, nearly 250,000 people have been applying for disability every month (while we’ve averaged only 150,000 new jobs every month).
The answers fall on both sides of the gray middle.
One factor has to do with what correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt calls the “Vast Disability Industrial Complex.” These are the sometimes shady, sometimes well-intentioned lawyers who fight to fatten the rolls of disability recipients. These lawyers get a cut of every winning claimant’s “back pay.” The more clients, the bigger the take. That’s why they run ads on TV shouting, “Disabled? Get the money you deserve!”
Then there are the doctors. Joffe-Walt profiles one rural Alabama doctor who signs off on disabilities for pretty much anyone lacking a good education on the assumption that their employment prospects are grim.
That points to the even bigger parts of the story. As the nature of the economy changes, disability programs are sometimes taking the place of welfare for those who feel locked out of the workforce — and state governments are loving it. States pay for welfare, the feds pay for disabilities.
There are those who are quick to argue that this is all bogus, there’s nothing amiss with the disability system that greater funding and a better economy won’t fix. Maybe they’re right. One way to find out would be to ask every recipient to get a thorough examination, just as they did in Britain. Maybe the results here in the United States would be interesting, too.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of the new book The Tyranny of Clichés.
But for a disabled Veteran to get disability he/she must jump multiple hoops and wait and wait and wait.
Shame
When you roll off your 99 weeks of Unemplooyment, you roll right onto Disability.
And after two years of sitting on your a$$, you probably are disabled!
The Obama administration has been corraling those who run out of unemployment into SSDI. I used to be very difficult to get the benefits. Now, all they have to do is claim depression or some phony made up illness.
That is why so many unemployed aren’t screaming about jobs.
It is cyclical. People get on disability for nothing and then one day the government demands that everyone prove they are disabled.
I knew a guy that was on it for drug addiction. They shook him out of the tree immediately when the Republicans took over Congress in the 90’s.
A woman I knew was on it for Epilepsy. Epilepsy can sometimes be hard to prove or refute. She was telling everyone that the Republicans were killing her by taking away her government check.
“Now, all they have to do is claim depression or some phony made up illness.”
Actually, they always turn you down the first time and then you get a lawyer. Then you are in.
Since Bill Clinton proclaimed to ‘change welfare as we know it’, this is what we’re left.
Ex son-in-law, same thing. "Bad back" at age 28, he's been milking S.S.D.I. now for 16 years. He works for cash now, when he works.
I got tired of tax payers supporting his marijuana and beer habits and reported him a couple of times. Result - - - Nothing at all.
LOL What a country. For attorneys anyway.
I’m trying to get my BIL to go on Disability. His knees are gone and he worked in Steel all his life so that is gone too.
Disability = Scam.
His knees probably have little or zero cartlidge. Simple x rays prove that fact and SS says that means disabled.
Bad backs and mood disorders are hard if impossible to prove, therefore most those people experience many denials unless they hire a lawyer to work the system for them.
Now I know there are people who do suffer life changing disabilities and need that safety net; but also see many more who abuse the system. The crazy thing is, you’ll see entire extended families; everybody on disability. They actually work at getting both spouses collecting then pump out 7-8 kids who are all covered by the govt. No joke, they have doctor visits every week, all travel and expenses covered; just shopping trips on the govt dime. Then they start home schooling their kids to get the state ed benefits until the kids fail the benchmarks after a couple years of no education. No joke they really have the safety net, benefit game figured out; and yet most of us would never even consider that lifestyle. Has to be some accountability someday.
RE: Now I know there are people who do suffer life changing disabilities and need that safety net; but also see many more who abuse the system.
OK, can someone please explain to me the SUDDEN SURGE in life changing disabilities?
Just to be fair. there are those on disability that comes from Private ins policies Like from mutual of O or AFLAC etc.Not all you meet are sucking the govt.
Just to be clear depression is not a phony made up illness, although there ar a few.
Some of the problem is that we have an aging population increasingly unable to do physical labor and not enough sedentary labor to keep them all employed.
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