….the Federal Disability Insurance Program…serves nearly 12 million people — up 20 percent in the last six years — and has a budget of $135 billion. That’s more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined. It’s been called a “secret welfare system” with it’s own “disability industrial complex,” a system ravaged by waste and fraud. A lot of people want to know what’s going on. Especially Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
Tom Coburn: Go read the statute. If there’s any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That’s pretty clear. So, where’d all those disabled people come from?
The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy. But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations — who’s also a physician — says it’s more complicated than that. Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved — another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.
Read it all or better still watch the video.
I have been involved Workers Compensation disability for 28 years. While my opinion is anecdotal I have seldom had even SSD attorneys disagree with my assessment. Of SSD recipients 1/3 are fraudulent, 1/3 can work and 1/3 are truly disabled. It is a program which we need as a safety net but it has become a boondoggle. Since 2009 (ask, what happened in 2009 to change things), a neighbor who is an SSD lawyer, who lived frugally has bought 2 $70,000 cars, a beach house and a mountain house. Once again, anecdotal but telling nonetheless.
RE: [blockquote]”Of SSD recipients 1/3 are fraudulent, 1/3 can work and 1/3 are truly disabled.”[/blockquote]
One of my family members is a physician and he would agree with this assessment. But honestly, for those who are collectivists and don’t share basic values for limited government, free-markets, private property rights, individual liberty, and the Constitution, such a reality is trivial. What matters is taking money from citizens and moving it into a vast bureaucratic centralized government maw and then that maw, the State, distributing it to the favored non-workers.
That’s what matters for people of that foundational worldview, and here we are.
I’m always amazed that the kind of corporate “gaming” in the medical and pharmaceutical empires gets such little attention – it too deprives the country of billions of tax dollars. But when widespread medicare and medicaid fraud is detected and prosecuted it rarely makes the front pages, and even more rarely becomes a topic on 60 Minutes. But given the way CBS submitted to the tobacco industry, that should come as no surprise.
Lest Sarah accuse me of “collectivist” and anti-American values, I too dislike the gaming of the “system”, but mostly because it makes it all the much more difficult for people who legitimately have a claim for disability benefits. I do think we need to pay more attention to how the already rich and powerful game this system. But we are the country, after all, that bailed out financial institutions to guarantee bonus payments for the corporate mavens who trashed our economy.
RE: “I’m always amazed that the kind of corporate “gaming†in the medical and pharmaceutical empires gets such little attention – it too deprives the country of billions of tax dollars. But when widespread medicare and medicaid fraud is detected and prosecuted it rarely makes the front pages, and even more rarely becomes a topic on 60 Minutes.”
“Gaming” =/ “fraud.”
Nor does “bailouts” =/ “fraud.”
So there’s an attempt to equate three different things as the same.
I’m more than happy to prosecute corporate *fraud* in the same way as we should prosecute individual *fraud*.
Of course, there should have been no bailouts at all, but that gets back to the foundational worldview of those who currently run the country, in both parties.
#3, I frequently see reports of large-scale Medicare and Medicaid fraud cases — in the conservative media. If the “mainstream” media don’t pick up these stories, it’s because they have an agenda to promote.