Federal Fiscal Follies – The Disability Scam (an Update)
Thought I’d drop a quick update on another Federal program rife with fraud. Yeah, yet another one of those Progressive “good ideas” that ended up paving the road to a famous but not-so-good destination.
According to the Social Security Administration, nearly 11 million Americans were receiving Social Security Disability payments in April. The precise total was 10,962,532 individuals.
For comparison, Greece’s last census put the population of Greece at 10,815,197.
You read that correctly. Today, we’ve got more people drawing Social Security Disability in the USA than Greece has people.
The number works out to almost 3 ½% of the total US population on 30 April 2013. And as I’ve written before, investigation indicates that about 1/4 of all Social Security Disability cases granted recently appear to have been granted improperly.
April also marked the 195th consecutive month that the number of persons receiving Social Security Disability payments increased. That’s 16 years and 3 months of consecutive increase in the Social Security Disability lists.
It’s beginning to look like Social Security Disability is at risk of becoming just another free handout program. Hell, for around 1/4 of those recently approved, that’s exactly what it appears to be.
Wonderful. Just freaking wonderful.
Oh that ain’t workin’
That’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’ . . . .
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Economy
How do I sign up? Can I work and get SSD? If I’m DAV 30% can I get SSD also or maybe I should just run for Congress.
I went through the SSDI hoops the same time I went through my VA Claim. Had an initial denial, Appealed, it was denied again, but in the mandatory review that went with my first appeal they granted it.
Like any other disability pension it is rife with people who either “work the system” or get denied when they should be granted it.
As far as the increase in the SSDI claims it ties in directly with the sad state of American Health. Not the Health System, but health itself. When 66% of Adults are overweight you will have a subsequent increase in diabetes, heart disease and chronic joint problems.
We are eating ourselves into third world status.
To me, SSD looks like a freeloader’s dream come true. Get some TV-advertised lawyer, make up your “disability”, and you get a ride on the gravy train! There are people who legitimately need it, but just like with welfare, I think the hustlers outnumber the truly needy!
I am convinced that the current administration worked behind the scenes to transfer folks from Unemployment Compensation to Social Security Disability as a means of hiding the true unemployment numbers.
It might be very interesting to compare the data/numbers of those who have stopped looking for work and/or taken themselves out of the working population with the numbers/percent increase in SSDI.
AW1 Tim: see the first article and the links it has. One of them documents the fact that between Jan 2009 and Sep 2012, 5.7 million people were approved for Social Security Disability payments.
Hard as hell to prove, but you’re not the only one who thinks that SSDI is now being treated as an alternative/supplement to long-term UC. Chana Joffe-Walt at NPR (of all places!) did a great article on the subject.
#1, No, you can’t work — in fact, if you do, you disqualify yourself for Social Security disability, which is supposed to be for people who can’t work at all. “Unsuccessful work attempts” won’t disqualify you though.
I don’t *think* narcissism and sociopathy are compensable disabilities…so being disabled may not qualify you for Congress so well. (I kid.)
Hondo, I think that may have started happening very late in 2008.
I don’t remember exactly when it appeared, but I do recall an article that winter (2008-2009) to the effect that people who had run through their unemployment compensation and were unable to find work filed for SSDI.
Ex-PH2: certainly could have. The 5.7 million figure was from Jan 2009 on. The “move” could have begun earlier. It seems to have accelerated since.
And about 1/4 of those new disability awards appear to be improper – at an annual average of around $13,300 per recipient.
From 2007, from England: The problem of unemployment in Britain illustrates perfectly the methods that Blair’s government used to obscure the truth. The world generally believes that, thanks to Labour’s prudent policies, Britain now enjoys low unemployment; indeed, Blair has often lectured other leaders on the subject. The low rate is not strictly a lie: those counted officially as unemployed are today relatively few. Unfortunately, those counted as sick are many; and if you add the numbers of unemployed and sick together, the figure remains remarkably constant in recent years, oscillating around 3.5 million, though the proportion of sick to unemployed has risen rapidly. Approximately 2.7 million people are receiving disability benefits in Britain, 8 or 9 percent of the workforce, highly concentrated in the areas of former unemployment; more people are claiming that psychiatric disorders prevent them from working than are claiming that work is unavailable. In the former coal-mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, about a quarter of the adult population is on disability… (Theodore Dalrymple, of course.) From this year, from the United States – In Hale County, Alabama, nearly 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability.[2] On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale. Sonny Ryan, a retired judge in town, didn’t hear disability cases in his courtroom. But the subject came up often. He described one exchange he had with a man who was on disability but looked healthy. “Just out of curiosity, what is your disability?” the judge asked from the bench. “I have high blood pressure,” the man said. “So do I,” the judge said. “What else?” “I have diabetes.” “So do I.” (From of all places, NPR.) The NPR study shows the change over 50 years in what kind of problems lead to new disability claims. As you might suspect – there’s a big increase in the number of claims for psychological disabilities and back pain. (Everyone ends up with a bad back if he lives long… Read more »
What else should we expect when there are good little bureaucrats roaming the streets of our cities signing folks up for assorted government programs? One such case with which I am personally familiar is of a guy who has chosen to live outdoors for some years. He has a limp, so the cute little bureaucrat figured she had a live one. Somewhere along in the questioning, he shared that he had served in the military. She got really, REALLY excited over that and proceeded to attempt to get him to sign up for VA benefits. He grumbled that his limp had nothing to do with his military service. Didn’t matter. He eventually gave her what she wanted – a signature on some forms and he is now living in special veteran housing and getting a complete VA disability. No waiting. No lines. He didn’t even have to take a physical.
I’m not surprised. I had to return from an overseas contracting job in February for cervical disc fusion. Before I was even complete with the WC and disability compensation process I received letters from the Soc Sec folks encouraging me to apply for SSDI even though I was on the mend and was headed back to work soon. Then came the lawyers pushing me to apply although I told them flat out I was going to work and soon. Its a racket. As was said, the only way you can screw up is by going back to work and not taking yourself off SSDI. They will eventually come looking for their money. But if you don’t want to work… then its a gravy train. I figure between my Army retirement, VA, and SSDI a man could lay on his ass for the rest of his years. Of course I think most of our readers would rather put a gun in their mouth than lay on their ass for the next 35 years but we’re certainly in the minority.
Alberich: yeah, that NPR article looks mighty familiar. See comment 5 above. (smile)
“I figure between my Army retirement, VA, and SSDI a man could lay on his ass for the rest of his years. Of course I think most of our readers would rather put a gun in their mouth than lay on their ass for the next 35 years”
I get all three, and trust me its tempting to cash it in some days.
This is a problem on a couple of levels, one it hides the actual failure of our current president’s attempts to put Americans back to work, and it encourages those who have no hope of finding work in their community to accept a disability (real or imagined) to avoid starving. 1 out of 4 granted improperly is a serious problem, based on the above numbers that equates to a couple of million Americans. I’m not certain there a couple of million extra jobs around to put all those folks into. How do we resolve that issue? These additional recipients are taking money from a program that was never originally designed as this type of social safety net and consequently has aided in the bankrupting of the social security program. You can’t have 2.5 million people starving in your streets either, when your president doesn’t do anything to build any kind of attraction for real manufacturing jobs and instead focuses on pipe dreams of “green” energy the economy will stay stagnant for the blue collar manufacturing workers. That’s a real problem that has a long term implication. With an ever widening gap between the top 1% and the rest of income earners a nation more closely resembles a banana republic than a great democratic republic. Making it easier to ship jobs to nations that have slave labor wages for most of their population doesn’t do much to build your export to import ratios. We don’t want to address any of this as a nation, like discussing the real reasons behind the murder rate in the US a real discussion about business, manufacturing and the long term impact of free trade/favored nation trade is boring and not in the least bit “sexy” with photo ops….therefore it is ignored, making handout programs rife with fraud and making 47% of the population dependent on the government and leaving that 47% without the ability to stand on their own or advance their own station in life. Ahh who am I kidding, it’s obvious that if two men marry the nation will be destroyed. Let’s keep… Read more »
My moons turning 59 this year. Hasn’t worked in two years and is mooching off my sister. She’s just holding out til she hits 65
Moms
another Federal program rife with fraud
But I repeat myself