US Not Alone In Seeing Increase In Disability Claims -- And What Does This Portend For The U.S.

From The Australian:

The government will crack down on eligibility for disability pensions in the wake of a 30 per cent spike in applications during the global financial crisis.

Families Minister Jenny Macklin has said the government was concerned that a change in work status rather than health was the main reason for the surge in applications for the welfare benefit. ...

Ms Macklin said the rate of people applying for the disability pension was very closely related to the rate applying for unemployment benefits. ...

Addressing a forum by the Labor-leaning think tank Per Capita in Canberra yesterday, she spelt out details of a new system for assessing claims for the disability pension that would place much greater weight on previous work history.

"From July next year, a new triage system will be introduced to cater for the different needs of new claimants for the disability pension."

People who were "manifestly eligible" because of catastrophic, congenital disability or cancer would be fast-tracked so they could get support more quickly.

Those who were clearly not eligible would be channelled out of the claim process earlier, while borderline claims would be subjected to an intensive work assessment. ...

Ms Macklin said the new system of assessment would place much greater emphasis on a person's work history.

"At the moment, there is no assessment of prior work history when determining whether an individual has the capacity to work in the future."

Fast tracking cases of the most clearly disabled -- where have I heard of that before?

The bigger issue here is that one response to an increase in the number of disability claims is to try to make it harder to get disability benefits. We have seen an increase in disability claims in the U.S. Will we, like Australia, see an attempt to make it harder to get disability benefits?