Nov 27, 2010

Can Anyone Explain This?

From the Washington Post:
The government should create incentives for employers to retain disabled workers on their payrolls as a way of slowing unsustainable increases in the number of people receiving Social Security disability benefits, according to a new report.

Adding a "front end" of benefits to keep the disabled in their jobs could arrest the rapidly growing expense of the federal disability program, a problem that has largely escaped the scrutiny of policymakers, according to the report's authors at the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project and the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Their proposal would require workers and employers to share the cost of a modest private disability insurance package, which is between $150 and $250 a year, according to the report, which is to be officially unveiled at a Dec. 3 event in Washington.

Workers seeking to go onto the federal disability program would first have to be approved for benefits from the private policy. Those benefits would go toward rehabilitation services, partial income support and other related services, the researchers said....

David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who co-authored the study, acknowledged that the overall proposal would likely face huge hurdles in a political environment that is growing increasingly hostile to new government mandates.

$150 to $250 a year for private disability insurance? Turning over disability determination to private insurers who get to pocket anything they do not have to pay out? Rehab services to enable all those people with degenerative diseases to return to work?

What could possibly go wrong?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The private disability insurance idea lacks merit to me unless based on SSA model of both medical and non-medical or lay evidence consideration.

But federally sponsored employers for the disable sounds good to me.

Also the SSA demostration program that was on this blog seems promising.

Anonymous said...

So, companies should pay people who can't do their job so they can keep showing up for work and not have to file for disability? Already sounds like the federal government. Oh, stop, I am a fed--just couldn't resist the obvious.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like another idea going nowhere.

Anonymous said...

why hasnt ssa implemented a partial disability rating system like the va? i know there are pros/cons to each system but what is the rationale for not giving some help to people who obviously need it but dont qualify under the current ssa disability system?

Anonymous said...

Rubbish

Anonymous said...

What would he suggest doing about someone who develops a serious (disabling) condition some time after employment has ended? Send them back to work?