Posted on 01/14/2020 8:04:30 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A proposed change to federal disability assistance would result in millions of more case reviews, likely cutting off many disabled recipients, if the changes are enacted.
The federal government is accepting public comments on the proposal until the end of January.
Under the proposal, millions more reviews would be conducted and hundreds of thousands of people would have reviews more frequently.
“We think the real intent of this is just to be a backdoor cut to the program,” said Jen Burdick, a supervising attorney with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, who assists people applying for disability benefits.
Anyone applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income or both already faces a lengthy and complex application process that can take years to complete. Once approved, recipients are already subject to what's called continuing disability review.
The proposal would create an additional review category where cases would be reviewed every two years.
Social Security officials declined to comment; the agency does not comment on any proposed rule making or legislation.
Critics say the agency has failed to provide any evidence or data about why it selected who would be subject to the new category, and the additional reviews will be a hardship to disabled individuals. They also fear it will lead to people losing benefits — not because their conditions have improved and they can now work, but because of the administrative and paperwork hurdles it will create.
“While a requirement to complete paperwork and submit documentation at the risk of losing monetary benefits and health care would be challenging for anyone, it is likely more difficult, stressful, and time-consuming for disability beneficiaries, who as a group are older, poorer, and sicker than the general population,” wrote Barbara Silverstone, executive director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives...
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Net savings with the added reviews: up to $80 million/year. Meanwhile, corporate welfare is $60-80 BILLION/year. Which one do you want to cut first?
PING!
Truth is, there are a LOT of people on disability who shouldn’t be there.
We need a system that gets the people on it who need it, and cuts out the people who shouldn’t get it.
Just my opinion.
I only know of 3 people that have gamed the “disability” system in SS. I’m sure there are a lot of them. They should do more investigations. I am not sure how to better screen or check on folks “gaming the system” but I give them credit for trying. I’m sure they will screw it up and some of the deserving folks will get shafted in the process. It’s the government.
When a permanently disabled 45 year old man (back problem) can’t work but can play softball and golf, I question my own ethical values.
I’ve heard “corporate welfare” used many times. It sounds disparaging. But I never hear folks giving examples beyond “Apple/Microsoft/Big Oil/Pharma/etc. not paying their fair share of taxes. Is this the corporate welfare? If we are talking about special appropriations and laws for companies (Solyndra, GM, Tesla, etc.), I get it and agree. But is there really $60 - 80 Billion/year wrapped up in that?
Not being crass, I seriously do not know.
Present reviews of SSDI disability cases, temporary status reviews are spotty and almost no later reviews are done on total disability cases. Cases should be checked on where the disability may end due to expected healing or recovery so the person goes back into the labor market. Unless the disability is deemed total due to listed conditions such as blindness or loss of multiple limbs, other total disability cases should be checked up on to see if the person is still medically disabled. Some do get better and no longer may qualify for total disability.
Good
Both
The Pentagon needs more Trillions of dollars to waste. Still haven’t found the other Trillions wasted.
Stop it at the front end.
Cut all disability save combat veterans. Family, church, charity, and state/county should be the safety net: NOT the federal government.
Yes, correct. Stop it when the application is made. Its going to cost billions to review everyone on it now so let attrition take care of those folks and make sure any new applications are very well vetted.
How true. Why are people getting SS disability for things like stress? In the hood it is called crazy money.
[[Critics say the agency has failed to provide any evidence or data about why it selected who would be subject to the new category, and the additional reviews will be a hardship to disabled individuals. They also fear it will lead to people losing benefits]]
Of course- they need to keep money to give to illegals, who by the way, get upwards of $45,000 per year in some cases- for doing nothing but sitting around on their government supplied housing porches drinking beer and smoking pot all day
Our country shells out approx $1 TRILLION DOLLARS every single year on illegals, is it any wonder the country is going broke?
[[Truth is, there are a LOT of people on disability who shouldn’t be there.]]
Yes, but you can bet that those won’t be the people kicked off under these new guidelines-
I would like a serious disability program not the sham it is today...
August 1, 1956. This is the date that President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the 1956 Amendments to the Social Security Act establishing the Social Security Disability Insurance program. At first the program provided monthly benefits only to disabled workers between the ages of 50 and 65 who met certain requirements for insured status. Even though the program later significantly expanded its coverage, its implementation in 1956 represented the historic culmination of an effort by Social Security planners that began in the 1930s.
There was widespread public approval for Social Security, but its design and features faced opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. Some in Congress felt it did not go far enough and were disappointed that it contained no provision for national health insurance, a proposal that had been opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA). Others felt the proposal went too far. As a result, the final Social Security Act of 1935 was scaled back from the more comprehensive social program outlined in the Committee on Economic Security report.
The resulting legislation was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 365 to 31, and in the Senate by a vote of 75 to 6. On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Act into law. A new agency—the Social Security Board (which later became the Social Security Administration)—was created to administer the new program.2
Insurance companies began to offer disability insurance during the latter part of the 19th century. The policies generally provided only accident protection and were limited both in the amount of the benefit payable and the length of time that benefits were paid. Policies usually allowed the insurance company to cancel the policy or increase the premium on relatively short notice. In 1916, the first noncancellable and guaranteed-renewable policies were offered; this was considered a revolutionary innovation at that time (Soule 1984, 1–2).
After World War I, the disability insurance industry grew significantly, and many policies included liberal definitions of disability, something that many companies would later regret. Since many of the policies were written by companies with skills in life insurance rather than disability insurance, important protections for the companies were sometimes missing from the policies. For example, some of these policies increased the benefit the longer the policyholder remained disabled, thereby creating a disincentive for the person to return to work (Soule 1984, 2–4).
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the number of disability insurance claims rose dramatically, and the length of time the policyholders remained disabled increased. Losses in the disability insurance industry were substantial, particularly for companies that had written policies with expansive definitions of disability. Many companies stopped selling disability insurance, others failed financially, and the remainder made changes in their rating or underwriting practices to make themselves less vulnerable to loss (Soule 1984, 4).
Sales of disability insurance began to increase after 1940, but the policies were very restrictive. The typical disability insurance policy had a definition of disability that was strictly determined by the policyholder's ability to work in any occupation, paid no more than $200 per month, and was time-limited to no more than 2 or 3 years.
In 1938 the first Advisory Council was jointly chartered by the Social Security Board and the Senate Finance Committee.
disability insurance was a topic of discussion for an Advisory Council strongly divided on the issue. One group of Advisory Council members, led by Edwin E. Witte, an economist from the University of Wisconsin, favored immediate inauguration of benefits for persons who became totally and permanently disabled before age 65 and for their dependents.
Regarding disability insurance, the 1938 Advisory Council's final report included a unanimous recommendation that stated: the provision of benefits to an insured person who becomes permanently and totally disabled and to his dependents is socially desirable.
This political debate continued into 1939, a year during which 57 life insurance companies doing business in New York lost $29 million on permanent disability insurance. It was estimated that the entire insurance industry had lost over half a billion dollars. In an effort to curtail the losses, companies began to tighten the definition of disability, to increase the period before benefits were payable, and to place restrictions on the types of persons to whom they would sell policies. Most companies eventually stopped selling disability insurance (Berkowitz 1987, 51–52).
Social Security planners started formulating disability insurance program policies long before the program was actually introduced. Arthur Altmeyer, who headed the Social Security Board and later the Social Security Administration from 1936 to 1953, made major contributions to the development of disability policy as early as 1941.
Since he did not regard the permanence of disability to be predictable in all cases, Altmeyer strongly advocated that physical and vocational rehabilitation be provided whenever there was a reasonable likelihood that the worker could once again become capable of working. Thus, the social insurance disability program he proposed had a threefold purpose: medical care to prevent and cure chronic disease, rehabilitation for workers with chronic impairments, and cash benefits for the chronic invalid.
in its annual reports to Congress in 1944 and 1945, the Social Security Board recommended the adoption of a disability program (Social Security Board 1944; 1945, 3). Still, with the end of the Great Depression and with the prosperity of the postwar era, the expansion of Social Security was less of a Congressional priority.
However, one priority during World War II was a program to assist civil defense workers who became disabled in the performance of their civil defense duties (DeWitt 1997, 69). In 1942, President Roosevelt created the Civilian War Benefits program to address this concern. The Civilian War Benefits program was allocated $5 million for a program to pay disability and medical benefits to affected individuals and survivor benefits to their families. The program paid temporary and permanent disability benefits as well as partial benefits.
In 1948, Social Security Actuary Robert Myers provided estimates of participation and cost for a potential disability program. He estimated that the number of disability beneficiaries would reach from 300,000 to 800,000 by 2000; that the program would require contributions of 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent of payroll; and that the program would cost from $200 million to $500 million per year. Since the estimated increase in cost inherent in the Council's report recommendations was so small, Myers saw no need to increase contributions to finance the disability program. He cautioned, however, that if the disability program were expanded, his estimates would be meaningless (Advisory Council 1949, 83–84).
In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in March 1949, Altmeyer proposed a federal disability insurance program that paid both temporary and permanent benefits. However, the legislation that passed Congress was instead an income maintenance program called Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD). It provided federal grants to the states to administer the program, precisely the type of program that was recommended in the memorandum of dissent that was attached to the 1948 Advisory Council Report.
The American Medical Association (AMA) feared that authorizing physicians employed by the federal government or private physicians designated by SSA to perform physical and mental examinations on applicants would ultimately lead to some form of national health insurance. The AMA maintained that disability should be eliminated through rehabilitative medicine rather than encouraged by paying disability benefits. Thus, the AMA joined the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce in bringing pressure on Congress not to adopt the disability freeze provision (Berkowitz 1987, 69). A compromise was reached when a member of the congressional conference committee suggested that the states be assigned the responsibility for making disability decisions. Since physicians would not have any direct contact with the federal government, the AMA was willing to accept this compromise.
in 1954, disability was defined as the inability to engage in substantial gainful activity due to a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that could be expected to result in death or to be of long-continued and indefinite duration. Eligibility was limited to persons whose disability had lasted for at least 6 months and whose earnings record demonstrated a strong and recent connection to the workforce. Disability determinations would be made by the states under agreements with the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW) and reimbursed through the Social Security trust fund.6
The "piecemeal" implementation approach adopted after 1950 led Social Security administrators to focus on incremental implementation of disability provisions rather than advocate for a comprehensive disability insurance initiative. From this strategy emerged a 1955 plan that proposed cash benefits to disabled workers only when aged 50 years and older.
The 1956 legislation provided for the payment of cash benefits to disabled applicants between the ages of 50 and 64 who met special requirements to be insured for disability benefits, and for disabled adult children who had a disability that began before the age of 18 and were survivors or dependents of Social Security beneficiaries.
Although the period before enactment was characterized by a fierce political battle, once in place the disability program experienced a period of Congressional program expansion. The expected problems predicted by its original opponents—national health insurance and economic losses in the insurance industry—appeared not to materialize. In practice, as long as the SSA's chief actuary at the time (1947–1970), Robert J. Myers, reported that the change was affordable, Congress was willing to enact legislation that expanded the program (Berkowitz 1987, 108). Examples of these program changes include the following.
Changed the description of disability to an impairment "that could be expected to last for a period of 12 months or longer" (instead of an impairment having a "long-continued and indefinite duration") (section 303).
Regarding this change, the 1965 Amendments targeted one of the most difficult problems in making determinations of disability: what constituted a "long-continued and indefinite duration." According to Arthur Hess, the first Director of SSA's Bureau of Disability Insurance (and later Deputy Commissioner), an implicit understanding of the definition of disability emerged from the early Congressional hearings, debates, and reports. Underlying the original disability legislation was the expectation that a disability was expected to be of a sufficient duration that it might be characterized as permanent, even though the word "permanent" was not included in the law (Hess 1957). In making the 1965 change, Congress extended the law to immediate benefit entitlement for an additional expected 60,000 disabled workers and their dependents.
Additional legislation passed in 1972 provided automatic benefit adjustments (indexing) tied to the consumer price index (CPI) to begin in 1975, permitting benefits to increase automatically each January when the CPI rose 3 percent or more from the time of the last benefit increase.
Benefit increases, liberalization of program requirements, and changes in the economy resulted in an unanticipated, but significant, increase in program costs. Efforts to bring rising costs under control created further problems for SSA.
During the 1970s, the number of persons insured for disability benefits increased by more than one-third. Between 1970 and 1980, contributions to the disability trust fund almost tripled, due in part to increases in the disability program's tax rate allocation, and trust fund assets peaked at $8.1 billion by 1974.20
However, the number of disability beneficiaries in 1980 was almost double what it had been in 1970. Outgoing benefit payments increased by a multiple of five. Given the growth in beneficiaries, after its peak in 1974, the trust fund assets declined to $2.7 billion in 1982 (Social Security Administration 2006b, Tables 4.A2, 4.C1, and 5.D3). Congress became concerned about the financial outlook as early as 1975.
The automatic indexing of benefits by the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) legislated in 1972 (and implemented in late 1974) also contributed to a dramatic increase in replacement rates. Because of a technical flaw in the automatic adjustment provision related to the use of wage versus price indexing of preretirement earnings, the benefits of the newly eligible were being overly compensated for inflation (Robertson 1978, 21). Consequently, between 1970 and 1980, the median replacement rate rose from less than 50 percent of past earnings to about 70 percent. Replacement rates for low earners rose to more than 90 percent, and the proportion of new beneficiaries with a replacement rate of 80 percent or more rose from about 13 percent to almost 40 percent. Not only were the high replacement rates costly, they created a disincentive to leave the disability program and return to work.
It was the responsibility of the state Disability Determination Services to conduct the continuing disability reviews. With the negative stories in the press, many state officials felt uncomfortable about the position in which they had been placed, in part because of the excessive workload.
In 1983, Massachusetts and New York refused to continue conducting the reviews. The National Governors Association passed a resolution in support of a proposal pending in Congress that would force SSA to use a medical improvement standard in conducting the reviews. Many other governors then suspended the reviews in their states (Berkowitz 1987, 142).
There were numerous court decisions that challenged SSA's disability determination policies in the early 1980s. In Finnegan v. Mathews (1981), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an individual's disability benefits could not be terminated on the basis of medical factors absent a finding of clear error in the previous determination of disability or evidence of medical improvement sufficient to establish that the individual was no longer disabled (Derthick 1990, 139).
The main provisions of the 1984 Amendments were as follows (Collins and Erfle 1985, 5–11):
Expansion continues overall it seems: - https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v66n3/v66n3p1.html
In a 2006 analysis, Autor and Duggan state that the most significant factor in the growth of SSDI usage has been the loosening of the screening process that took place in 1984 following the signing of an SSDI reform act into law; this directed the Social Security Administration to relax screening of mental illness, place more weight on applicants' reported pain and discomfort, consider multiple non-severe ailments to be disabling, and give more credence to medical evidence provided by the applicant's doctor. These changes had the effect of increasing the number of new SSDI awards and shifting their composition towards claimants with low-mortality disorders such as mental illness and back pain.
In April 2019, the Social Security Trustees reported that under current law, "the DI Trust Fund reserves [will] become depleted in 2052 and the OASI Trust Fund reserves [will] become depleted in 2034"
Qualification
According to the Social Security Administration (SSA)
The work requirement is waived for applicants who can prove that they became disabled at or before the age of 22, as these individuals may be allowed to collect on their parent's or parents' work credits. The parent(s) experience no loss of benefits.
Medical evidence is signs, symptoms and laboratory findings and is required to document the claim. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Disability_Insurance
$800 million
If that’s the case, stop shelling out dinero to illegals, and our deficit goes away!
Of course, if any of that trillion is actually state or local money, then the deficit will merely be significantly reduced.
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