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2sleepy - go back and read Post #64 (page 7). From my experience it is one of the most abused entitlements in the US government.
The tragedy part is that the misconduct of many taints those who really need the help.
I googled it, of 300 employees who were laid off from that plant 290 applied for SSDI and went to the same Doctor. The SSA Inspector General launched an investigation Puerto Rico Disability Claims Investigated - WSJ
The investigation was launched before their cases were reviewed or approved. I will try to find out how that ended up, but my guess is that not even a fraction of those who applied were approved.
I would agree..except that if Congress is allowed to institute means testing they will keep going back and lowering the asset limit It might start out with people who have 5 million in assets, but it won't take long for them to get it down to 100k and include the equity in your home as an 'asset'. It's too risky, and once they do it they will start poor shaming the remaining recipients and convince the public that those feisty old people need to get to work and pull themselves up by their bootstraps
That is certainly a probability unless some kind of wording could be placed into it giving a 5 or 10 year time period where it can't be altered and when those times hit it has to be voted on by the full congress.
It comes down to..too many people, not enough jobs and nobody saves.
Saving worked great when compound interest paid more than the inflation rate. What is the point of saving $1,000 today when ten years from now it will buy $500 worth of goods? You are better off spending it on durable goods today that you can still be using ten years in the future.
That is certainly a probability unless some kind of wording could be placed into it giving a 5 or 10 year time period where it can't be altered and when those times hit it has to be voted on by the full congress.
too scary for me, when they got us distracted with some other BS they would quietly take out that wording. It's obvious what they want to do and even though I agree that billionaires don't need a SS check it's a slippery slope to let politicians start means testing it
You have some judges with a 99% approval rate on SSDI petitions.
Some lawyers earn their living from SSDI cases. If the judge is their friend, which is often the case, it's natural for the judge to help them earn a living. And the federal money coming in helps the local community. The disabled person spends it at local stores, which pay employees, which spend that money at local stores, etc. What do you expect the judge to do? Favor the federal government over their local community and friends?
In some cases, the lawyers might never bring the case before the judge unless the lawyer decides it qualifies. And that might be part of the reason for the 99% approval rate. In other communities, there might be a lot of lawyers bringing cases that only have a 25% chance of winning, and that might partly explain why some judges have a much lower approval rate on SSDI petitions than others.
Federal money is like a spilled jar of honey. Judges and lawyers are like ants attracted to that honey. It doesn't really matter how honest or dishonest they are, because they're equally attracted to the honey regardless. It would be like asking how honest or dishonest individual ants are. And what do you expect the federal government to do? Turn the jar of honey upright, so it stops spilling, and all the ants starve?
90% of disabled people could work full time if they could get jobs. The problem is that employers don't want to hire them. What should qualify as a disability if 90% could work? Being unable to get a job? Or being unable to theoretically work if they could theoretically get a job in some alternate universe? But if being unable to get a job is the criteria, does it imply those whose disabilities make them obnoxious are the ones who qualify the most? Such as if they have a mental disability that makes them insult people a lot, even in a job interview? Or if their face is grotesquely disfigured, making it hard for the job interviewer to even look at the person? What if a person with a disfigured face could load trucks all day with 100 pound boxes and never get tired? Should being unable to get a job, because nobody will hire them, because of their face, qualify them for disability? That kind of question clarifies the real issues. How do we decide who qualifies and who doesn't, and how do we prevent fraud? Those are complicated, and most people can't even agree on them. So we have a long way to go before we come up with a workable solution to the whole problem.
SSDI is tragically abused but is at its core a good program. The abuse needs to be eliminated vigorously.
But what if the cost of eliminating it is higher than the cost of the abuse itself? And what about all the collateral victims of the vigorous elimination of the abuse? There are bound to be a lot of people with legitimate disabilities caught up in the same net as the abusers, while a lot of abusers escape that net.
More than 50% of claims are for mental impairments.
One possibility would be to disqualify all mental conditions except those where the person is institutionalized. But what would the implications of that be? Would more people end up institutionalized? Would there be a lot more homeless people with mental illnesses not quite severe enough to get them locked up, but severe enough to make them homeless?
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