Recently, there have been a number of news reports in major news publications criticizing the Social Security Disability Insurance System. Now the News Program 60 Minutes has gotten into the act. This major news program was able to produce a story about the Social Security disability program without interviewing a single disabled person or disability advocate? Their chief source was Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican with a documented hostility to Social Security.
60 Minutes and Senator Coburn displayed a rank ignorance about the disability program: how it works, who the beneficiaries are, why it has grown. Why 60 minutes failed to interview any number of experts to present an educated expert view of the program is unknown. But Sixty Minutes apparently could not be bothered to present a more balanced picture of the disability program.
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They try to correlate the rising unemployment rate with the rising rate of disability claimants and come to erroneous conclusion that people are using the SSDI system instead of looking for work. The reality is that many elderly workers have received special accommodations from their employers that allow them to work with their disabilities because they have been loyal, hardworking employees for decades. But when the economy turns down and these workers are laid off, they are not capable of working in a completive job market.
The 60 Minutes report makes it seem as if winning a disability claim is easy. This is far from the truth. Americans with disabilities already face growing challenges in their efforts to gain disability benefits.
- Filing a claim can prove to be a daunting, complex bureaucracy that can sometimes take months and even years to navigate.
- Meeting standards is tougher. For example, alcoholism and drug abuse are disqualified; obesity, pain and diabetes are eliminated as sole criteria; and mental illness and HIV standards are tougher.
Blaming the disabled for America’s economic woes is unfair. There are strains on the Social Security system that should not be blamed on disabled Americans who need support.
- The SSDI program provides income to nonelderly adults most of whom have worked in the past and have contributed to the fund-but are determined unable to work now because of a medical condition that is expected to last at least a year or to result in death.
- Many factors have increased the number of people receiving SSDI benefits: the aging Baby Boomers; increases in the number of women working; and increases in life expectancy, with more people surviving what once might have been fatal disabilities due to medical advancements.
People get frustrated and concerned that a government program that most people have been required to pay into for decades will not be able to provide coverage if and when it is needed. In addition, there are significant societal costs when claimants are improperly denied benefits. These costs include:
- Increased home foreclosures and evictions
- Homelessness
- Family dissolutions
- Bankruptcies
- Welfare payments
- Strains on Medicaid and other residual indigent health care systems from postponed care
- Human suffering when a claimant cannot obtain medical treatment
- Sometimes death
Stories like the “60 minutes” and NPR pieces perpetuate the false image of disability recipients as the undeserving poor, slackers and frauds. That will make it easier for wealthy lawmakers like Coburn to hack away at the program in its time of need.
It is not fair to attempt to balance our federal budget on the backs of the disabled. We all have a stake in seeing deserving people with disabilities get the benefits they need and have earned.
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