United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Jonah Goldberg had a great editorial April 5, 2013 about the social security disability program.  It appeared in the Columbus Dispatch.   If the British experience is any indication, we have 67% of the folks on social security disability that can still work.  Goldberg indicated that .65% of theUS workforce in 1960 was on disability.  By 2010, it was 5.6% or a 9 fold increase.   Wow!!  Looking at the Office and Management Budget website (omb.gov) and the historical data section, I found the Social Security trust funds with their historical income and expenditures.  It showed that $140 billion was spend on Social Security Disability payments in 2011 and $146 billion payments were estimated for 2012.  This trust fund is projected to go into deficit by 2016…Even if we estimate that only 33% of the folks on social security disability can still work, that generates $47 billion a year in savings and eliminates the deficit in this trust fund.  The Administration is aware of this issue and in its budget for 2013 is requesting an additional $1 billion to examine 650,000 people (see omb.gov, budget tab, social security administration budget).  We at United We Stand (unitedwestandllc.com) agree with the administration’s direction but would request another $2.1 billion to examine 2,000,000 recipients each year.  Even with these added funds, it will take 4 years to get through all the disabled workers.

Just how serious is this ‘vast disability-industrial complex’ so called by correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt and alluded to by Mr. Goldberg in his editorial? It appears quite serious and effective and is composed of many aggressive lawyers and friendly physicians.  One indication of the seriousness of this is a series of quotes about the social security disability program from Attorney Joseph Matthews with Dorothy Matthews Berman in a book I am reading about Social Security, Medicare, and Government Pensions (NOLO 2012).  On page 51, he indicates there are  over 8,000,000 workers on disability.  On page 52, he references a book (NOLO’s Guide to Social Security Disability: Getting and Keeping your Benefits) that guides the worker on how to convince the Social Security Administration that they are disabled.  On page 61, he indicates that ‘age is also taken into consideration. Social Security realizes that it won’t be committing to as great an outlay of money when it grants disability benefits to people nearing retirement age…For this reason, and because it is more difficult for older workers to find new employment…Social Security tends to approve their disability claims more readily than those of younger workers’.  If you factor in the ‘disability freeze’ into the retirement calculations of these disabled workers, by acting generously to the older workers, the Social Security Administration is increasing its outlays later for retirement benefits for these workers.

Harry Pukay-Martin