[SkyPilot]

Is the sky blue?

[SueRae]

The most shocking thing is that this article appears in the Inquirer...

[colorado tanker]

I agree there are abuses, but I have a relative who is most definitely disabled by a disease no one should have. The payments are not generous.

[grania]

In an economy with low unemployment, employers would have to be a lot less selective, and it would be easier for the borderline disabled to find jobs they could adapt to. Add to that, why would an employer hire a disabled person with all of the hassle providing for their needs, or if they want to fire them?

Are there people who game the system? Sure. There are a lot more, though, who are for real. I'd prefer it if they had to do some kind of work to get a check, or course. That's another issue.

[Cementjungle]

When I moved to WA several years ago I really learned how bad the "disability" situation was. The guy we hired to mow our lawn was on permanent disability for falling off a ladder years earlier. He does odd jobs when he's not out on his sailboat.

We have two duplexes up there... about 90% of all applicants are on disability for things like being obese, attention deficit, or various other "conditions".

[Adder]

Its back door unemployment. Folks who exhausted their unemployment were almost automaticly signed up as disabled in some areas.

IIRC the stories of a couple years ago.

[knak]

Of course it is! I volunteer for a free health care clinic and can't tell you how many people come in wanting us to do Social Security Disability determinations. We don't do them. Most come in with a look of pain in their face, holding their back, limping, etc... When we tell them we don't do the determinations, they walk out without a limp or whatever, looking fine.

I know many people are actually disabled when they apply and those are the ones that get through the system the first try. The ones requiring lawyers to get them through are the iffy ones.

[publius911]

Is Social Security disability program ‘backdoor welfare’?

Most stupid question of the decade. Gonna be hard to top that.

That it was welfare has been obvious from the get-go. That they called it SS Disability would be prosecutable fraud in any private enterprise. It is functionally criminal fraud by Congress, but they made themselves immune from prosecution.

Pretty slick, eh?
Tens of millions of permanent voters!
Such a deal!

Finally, any suggestion that it be eliminated, or removed from Social Security, and moved to a clearly welfare-named program, is met with the mortal political scream that You can't touch Social Security!

And every senile geezer on the continent, unaware that he's being "had" again joins in the hysterical chorus.

Can you say, We've been Swived --- again?

Every time I think of how many people of a certain subculture bought a cane, visited a doctor well-known in certain circles, and have "won" a permanent disability check for life, having worked perhaps a total of two years their entire life in 40 temporary jobs just does nasty things to my blood pressure.

I often wonder how "fraud" was eliminated from the legal dictionary, from the social conscience, and from the working taxpayer obligation consciousness.

[trebb]

Is sodomy “back door sex”?