There's another installment in the Washington Post's never-ending set of stories designed to prove that the reason that there are more disabled people than there used to be is opioid addiction.
Wow, you know there ought to be a law saying you can't get Social Security disability benefits because you're a drug addict or alcoholic. Oh, wait, there is. Well, they ought to really enforce it. No, wait they already do.
So why is opioid addiction coming up in every piece that the Post does on Social Security disability? I don't know but it looks a lot like they're really interested in stigmatizing Social Security disability recipients. There are studies showing that around 27% of the adult population engages in binge drinking and that 9% of the adult population uses illicit drugs. Opioid abuse affects 4.6% of the adult population. That's a lot of people with substance abuse problems. Substance abuse affords no immunity to arthritis, heart disease, mental illness, cancer or any other health affliction. It's easy to find Social Security disability recipients who have substance abuse problems because such a significant percentage of the population has a substance abuse problem. But they didn't get on disability benefits because of the substance abuse but despite it.
By the way, the Post keeps concentrating on opioid problems in Kentucky and West Virginia. Certainly, those states have problems but the states with the worst problems are Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Indiana and Arizona. I guess those states don't fit with the dumb hillbilly drug addict theme. By the way, I'm sure the Post could have found plenty of opioid addiction in D.C. and its suburbs if it had tried. It's everywhere.
Maybe many of the people who are on Social Security disability or are applying for benefits are in pain and with healthcare so problematical in the US they resort to self-medication through alcohol or illegally obtained prescription painkillers.
ReplyDeleteInvestigative journalism is so much easier when start with predetermined conclusion and then just poke around to find a few things to back it up.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you got your info re the worst states with opioid problems, but it's interesting that three of them are in liberal states, and four of them are in the Ninth Circuit.
ReplyDeleteWhoops; i guess that's five of them are in the Ninth
ReplyDeleteYou do know that when all the folks that were on for drug addiction and alcoholism were thrown off that about 80-90% of them got back on for something else, right? And some that didn't may not have because they failed to go to CEs, etc.
ReplyDelete"Kentucky and West Virginia. Certainly, those states have problems but the states with the worst problems are Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Indiana and Arizona."
ReplyDeleteAren't Kentucky and West Virginia closer to DC than the other states listed?
SSA policy is that if someone's substance abuse is so frequent or severe that we cannot find a signicantly lengthy period of time where they were not abusing substances to see how they functioned in its absence, we have to use their functioning as it is while using which often results in a finding of inability to sustain or marked limitations in social functioning, attention etc. so end up being an allowance. Also no one is allowed to ask how a non working SSI eligible person can sustain a $200 a day drug habit. Such cases however are very rare. Leg infections and cellulitis due to skin popping seem to be be the only cases we find DA and A material.
ReplyDelete“The system produces the outcome,” said W. Bryan Hubbard, acting commissioner of the department. Disability applicants often need to substantiate claims of pain with prescriptions to get benefits, and “once you get the benefit . . . what else is there to do outside of exist and numb yourself? And the opioid pills, it’s exactly what they do. It deadens the person. It deadens their mind. It anesthetizes them to life.”
ReplyDeleteSome truth to this. I have seen Judges write in decisions that the person took no pain medication so they obviously don't have a disabling condition even when my clients explain to the Judge how they are worried about addiction, have side effects when they take pills and try to control the pain without medication.