Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a group that "has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986," has a report on the recent surge of media reports purporting to show problems with Social Security's disability programs. Here are a few excerpts (emphasis added):
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (12/9/12) reported that poor families in Appalachian Kentucky were pulling their kids out of literacy classes. The reason: They feared that if their kids learned to read, it would disqualify them from receiving monthly $698 disability checks from the federal government’s Supplemental Security Income program. ...
According to numerous disability experts, [Kristof's column] was almost entirely wrong or unsupported ...
In a March series, NPR’s Planet Money revisited the world of SSI, this time for adults—and seemed to have learned few of the lessons of the Kristof mess. Calling the program “a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net” and “a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills” (NPR.org, 3/13), NPR’s Chana Joffe-Walt painted a picture of soaring disability rolls and nebulous diagnoses, where a “disability industrial complex” is pushing people willy-nilly onto the dole whether they need it or not (All Things Considered, 3/25/13). ...
As with Kristof’s piece, the NPR series led to a firestorm of rebuttals, pointing out significant flaws in the reporting. Media Matters (3/22/13), calling the NPR piece “error-riddled,” cited a Government Accounting Office study (6/26/12) that found disability examiners typically relied on four to five separate medical and school records before making a determination, as well as studies by the Center for American Progress (9/10/12) and the National Bureau of Economic Research (8/05) that found receiving SSI reduced the chances of a family being below the poverty line by 11 percent ...
What has changed is that cutting SSI has become a primary policy target for political think tanks on the right and center (Investor’s Business Daily, 12/17/10; Hamilton Project, 3/29/13). In his piece, Kristof cited as a main source Richard Burkhauser, who said that as a result of SSI, “if you do better in school, you threaten the income of the parents. It’s a terrible incentive.” Kristof identified Burkhauser as a “Cornell economist who recently wrote a book on disability programs.”...
That book, The Declining Work and Welfare of People With Disabilities, was in fact published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute—home to Bell Curve author and welfare-reform godfather Charles Murray—which has fixed its sights on disability benefits for several years. Burkhauser is also a resident scholar at AEI, something Kristof never mentioned in his reporting. ...
Burkhauser’s book was also the source of Kristof’s erroneous report that 8 percent of poor children receive SSI—a number that Kristof (NYTimes.com, 1/23/13) later wrote that he factchecked by asking Burkhauser himself, who unsurprisingly confirmed it. (The actual figure, as later calculated by Fremstad—CEPR, 12/20/12—is less than 4 percent.)
NPR’s Joffe-Walt said she was alerted to the growing disability rolls—or as she put it, “14 million people hidden in plain sight”—by Wharton business economist Mark Duggan (All Things Considered, 3/22/13), who has advocated that the disabled be required to rely on private disability insurance for two years before they can switch to the government program (WSJ.com, 11/30/10). She also interviewed both Burkhauser (All Things Considered, 3/28/13) and his co-author Mary Daly (All Things Considered, 3/27/13) without noting their ties to AEI or to each other.
NPR, meanwhile, may have had its own reasons to want to seek out problems with government disability benefits: The Planet Money story was the first under a three-month underwriting deal with Lincoln Financial, a company that sells private disability insurance (to, among other clients, AEI—Daily Kos, 4/25/13)—something that NPR didn’t see fit to mention anywhere in its radio or online coverage.
14 comments:
People can shake their heads at these stories if they want. I work in a low-income, inner city office and I know what I see and deal with on a daily basis. I don't pretend to know the percentages of people committing some act of fraud or whether a certain person should be on or off the rolls. I just know it happens daily where I am located. If its happening here, there's a good chance it's happening in other places as well. Is it justified to fraud or lie or withhold information from the government if you "really need the money?" I love it when people say the number of people committing fraud is really low so it's not pursued. Maybe I shouldn't pay my taxes next year. Maybe if the total number of people that font pay is small enough, the IRS won't worry about it and just let it go, lol. I mean I really could use the money and I'm not hurting anyone.
Anon at 11:58am...
I don't doubt that fraud exists, and I'm sure you've seen it but what you're describing is the same kind of anecdotal evidence everyone seems to refer to when attacking the current system. Little or no facts or statistics to back it up.
I used to work as a service advisor at a Jeep dealership. People would bring me their vehicles when they were broken so all I ever saw were broken Jeeps. After a while, my mind was conditioned to think every Jeep was junk when in REALITY the vast and overwhelming majority of them ran perfectly well and were quite reliable. I feel you and your hard-working colleagues at SSA may be experiencing the same sort of thing--you've seen people (or suspected them) of trying to defraud the system enough times that you're starting to think it's more widespread than it really is. Or maybe not...just my observation. Take it for what it's worth.
Oh, and GET BACK TO WORK!!!
Im off today, relax.
I understand your points, but I can prove the fraud or lying in the majority if the cases I process. The problem is that OIG only wants the "big fish". My point was that all the "little fish" add up to a whopper.
Sorry, I'm having a hard time believing it's the "majority" of cases. There is a difference between errors in an application and outright fraud.
Now, GET BACK TO RELAXING!!!
If you're having a hard time believing that there is fraud in a majority of disability cases, it's only because you aren't familiar with disability cases.
I've been working with disability claimants all over the country for 5 years.
Anyone else with first-hand experience want to chime in? Without facts or statistics, I'm finding it very hard to believe.
If you want a common example of fraudulent documents, just look at the medical source statements that representatives often have doctors complete. Many of the opinions on those forms are false -- either outright exaggerations/lies by sympathetic treaters or mere recitation of the claimant's subjective statements without any objective medical findings to substantiate the opinions.
I saw a MSS today where the psychiatrist said the claimant had an extreme limitation in ADLs and social functioning, but the claimant repeatedly reported cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, washing dishes, driving multiple times a week, getting together with friends regularly, attending church, attending multiple support group meetings and sometimes leading such meetings, taking care of relatives, etc.
If you need examples, look at one of the recent postings by Charles about the psychiatrist falsifying records for patients for immigration and disability matters.
Anecdotal
@ 4:58pm: How would you determine that there is fraud going on? Or is this as some might say, a "Witch Hunt"?
I'm disabled and not cause I wanted to be, I've been receiving the paltry SSI check since sometime in 2003, I live modestly, heck I can't even replace My car, even though by law I'm allowed to get a loan, most of My disabilities are physical and some are mental with physical aspects(a thyroid gland). I've had the IRS say that I had extra income(IRS record matching, what a joke), twice, which is a real bad joke as I live with no credit score, I'd love to win the lottery, but I know the odds are against one winning, so I consider that a waste of money, in any case its been proven twice that I have no extra income and My identity is intact according to the 3 credit reporting bureaus, If some could prove I had lots of money, I wish I knew where it was, since that would be news to Me. Just an overzealous IRS computer that seems to think an "M" is the same as a "W", since I've done Google searches with My name and found only My entries on a few forums, but nothing else. I'm tired now, sleepy, so I think I'll go and lay down.
How much fraud, lies, misrepresentations, abuse, etc. are you willing to accept in the Social Security and SSI disability programs? Is 1% OK, or 2%, or 5%, or what? At what point above the accepted level do you start to act to try to reduce these issues to the accepted level? Does this type of tolerance for these issues encourage and increase this problem? Are we now recalibrating our baselines and tolerance for these types of problems compared to past expectations vs. current expectations, and what does this mean for the future? Will we be prepared for the fallout when it is clear to see that we are at the point of enough is enough?
Obviously, there are many people who are truly disabled and deserving of SSI. However, anyone who believes that social security fraud is uncommon is terribly uninformed. Indeed, the system is so claimant-friendly it almost begs people to attempt fraud.
In addition, the former commissioner, whose primary goal was to reduce the backlog, did so by hiring many agency insiders as judges, people who were most likely to crank out as many decisions as he wanted, and, to do so, they would not be troubled with fully reading the claim files, such that those judges are likely to miss things and not realize when claimants are making things up.
Add to that, the former commissioner stopped psychological examiners from using the MMPI, which shows malingerers, and the former commissioner stopped judges and others in the Agency from googling claimants, which could often and easily show claimants being much more active than they allege.
Really, fraud is rampant -- it may not be the majority, but it is a lot, and the agency and the former commissioner played a big part. If one was truly concerned about the disabled, they would want to stop the fraud, so there would be more money for the truly disabled.
When I originally said majority I see it set off some people! I stand by my original post, more than half (majority) the SSI cases I come in contact with have some form of fraudulent behavior involved. Things like concealing marriages (you don't even have to be "legally" married to be a spouse is SSI), not reporting work, not reporting monetary help received from others, falsifying living arrangements, disposing of resources and the list goes on and on. Just because I encounter a lot of fraudulent activity in my office does not mean its in the majority of SSI cases in the country as a whole. As I stated, I'm in a low income, inner city office. SSI is a program that encourages lying and deceit as a means to obtain a monthly check for single mothers with multiple children who have dead beat fathers in areas like mine. It's the federal equivalent to what welfare used to be. Call my experiences anecdotal or whatever you like, proponents of the program will defend it in spite of any negative reports. The fraud is real and it is a problem. One of the posters above asked the real question which is " how much fraud is acceptable?" Apparently, SSA is willing to accept a high percentage since they have created a term called " similar fault" as a step down from fraud as a way to remove the word from being applied too often.
I have to agree.
While fraud in the sense the completely-pro-claimant crowd is hearing is not very prevalent (i.e. people who are not disabled or even significantly impaired attempting to receive disability), fraud in the disability application and receipt processes is.
I, too, see tons of earnings related "inconsistencies" (the word the Agency tells us to use in decisions when noting that a claimant has offered a bald-faced lie).
So many instances of bogus self-employment income reported to get free money in the form of EIC and child tax credits, then disclaimed during the disability hearings process as a mistake. Mentions of current work activity in treatment notes, but no earnings records related to this work because it is done under the table (thus leaving us unable to touch it because we don't have the resources to gather sufficient proof of the work activity).
I also see significant fraud in the vast majority of testimony and Function Reports/other statements--you all may take the following as inconsequential or nitpicking, but there is abundant lying under oath and in other statements.
How many of you ALJ readers have claimant's who proudly and strongly raise that right arm when being sworn in, holding it there long enough to complete the oath, and then testify later that they cannot use the right upper extremity at all, and are especially unable to raise that extremity above shoulder level?
Just be honest--your shoulder has significant arthritis or ligament damange. It hurts to move, and prevents you from doing much reaching and lifting. But when you say you can only sit for 10 minutes at a time and cannot lift your arm at all and after taking an oath and while sitting through a 45-minute hearing (without getting up or showing discomfort until precisely the time when the ALJ or your rep begins questioning about ability to sit...)--you've lied.
Nobody buys it because very few people are so debilitated that they cannot sit for more than 10 minutes. It's maddening because if the person were just honest--"I can sit, but after about an hour it really hurts and I have to get up and around. I can walk for an hour or a little more, but after that I am in so much pain that I have to not only sit, but lie down or recline for a significant period to recover."--they'd be more believable and have a better shot at success.
It seems like claimants, and I have to put part of the blame on reps since they prepare their clients, have forgotten that all you need to do is show no ability to perform work on a regular and continuing basis. A few absences each month or an inability to stand, walk, and sit a combined total of 8 hours in a workday will get you there...you don't have to convince the ALJ that your client is confined to a bed 23.5 hours each day. A hearing is not a contract negotiation or sales pitch--puffing is not a common or appropriate thing in the hearing room.
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