From Florida Politics:
[Florida Governor] Ron DeSantis is sympathetic to people determined to be disabled by the Social Security Administration, but he’s not accepting all claims at face value.
“Either you’re disabled or you’re not,” DeSantis said Sunday in Iowa [where he was campaigning for President]. ...
“There are some people that will kind of fake being disabled then work and then they should, you know, whatever. But I do think that if somebody has a disability and it prevents them from reaching their full potential and they’re eligible fine. But if, then they can do some type of employment that could supplement, you know, I don’t think that that would be a bad thing and I think that’s a good incentive.’ ...
“Now there’s a lot of fraud in the program and I think that’s been a huge issue,” DeSantis said, calling the problem “just massive.” ...
19 comments:
Love that picture, all it needs an apple in his mouth and a clown hat.
It's not fraud but a bit goofy when someone on SSI disability files for T2 disability, and is insured for T2 disability, gets denied for not being disabled but is not ceased from T16 because their improvement isn't great enough. If they were finally now for both programs they would be denied on both but since they're already on one they can't be thrown off. Not fraud but questionable policy.
if you believe that everyone on disability is truly disabled you are delusional. Every single rep has put someone on the dole that they knew could work. Its a game. i worked for a dib mill, they are no longer in business after more than 25 years of making the owner rich and the roles fatter. I lasted about three years before I could no longer be part of the the enterprise.
11:39. When we re-evaluate SSI CDRs we have to use the improvement standard. When we do the DIB we may or may not be able to use collateral estoppel depending on when and why they were allowed. This if they were allowed on a med voc and have since been able to work at an SGA level for a significant time, their DIB might be denied
My God, there's a little fraud in everything, even SSDI. Does that mean people who are truly disabled should be political pawns? Does that mean they should disband the program? NO! It happens and to prevent 5 people from committing fraud you should not leave 95 people, who are truly sick and disabled, without benefits, that is not right!
He's got a gripe with SSDI and Nikki is open to raising the full SS retirement age. We need to preserve this life saving program for all who need it. No politics with our Social Security!
To 1:06
Yes, I have represented people that were found disabled that I might not have found disabled under the law if it was up to me. But I have represented many people who the SSA denied that were manifestly disabled and were denied anyway.
It is not a perfect system. There are arbitrary decisions made every day in each direction.
Probably for the best that you got out of the "game"
The true mills like Eric Conn do eventually fall apart, but that doesn't mean that all their clients were frauds. Binder & Binder went out too though I'm not sure exactly the cause of their downfall.
I've been doing cases since 1970 and over the years have seen maybe two who clients who got on disability and I wasn't sure how. I've seen many who I knew were disabled and couldn't get on and few more who got just before they died.
Most of my work was with Legal Services, so I represented people with not very good cases, and they didn't get on. You really can't fake a disability, a doctor has to have records that back you up. SSA doesn't even count medical opinions without medical findings.
Binder is still in business. There was hedge fund ownership and leveraged bankruptcy about a decade ago but the firm is back again in family hands and we still get their SSD and SSI cases.
The issue is the grids. A 55 year old grids out at light. They are "disabled" under the rules, but clearly capable of working a full time job on a competitive basis. How do you explain to someone that a person is "disabled" and still capable of working full time?
I'm not advocating elimination of the grids, but for people who are not in the industry, it looks like capable people are getting benefits even though they can work. It's not unreasonable to question why capable people are getting benefits. But, it's not fraud.
Like others have said, it's not a perfect system, but irrational and inconsistent findings are not fraud. It's just a stupid system.
@7:54
I've never met a 55 year old who quits a light job to get disability, but I've met many younger people who are restricted to light work who can't get disability. It's not perfect, but it is a system. Unskilled light and sedentary jobs are disappearing from the US job market.
@7:54, you mean a 55 year old with a severe (long-lasting/terminal) and medically documented impairment, who can't go back to any job they've done in the past 15 years, with no education past high school, and who only worked unskilled jobs or has no transferable skills grids out at light...
People who worked enough to be insured for DI generally don't quit to wait 7 months for an initial determination that 2 out of 3 times is going to be a no unless something is really wrong.
@7:54
I explain it to them by explaining the Social Security Administration defines "work" as SGA, explain that "full time" means 40 hours/week (not 32 hours/week) on an ongoing basis, and I explain that unlike the multiple medical professionals and ALJs who are not inclined to grant benefits, the average layperson does not have access to hundreds if not thousands of pages of medical records to review.
I also explain, it's entirely common for disability recipients to falsely claim they are better off than they really are, to save face to their friends and family. That doesn't change the fact that they are disabled as determined in a lengthy, adverse, legal proceeding which often lasts years in an attempt to obtain benefits worth far less both monetarily and in terms of morale to the claimant, had the claimant (assuming they are capable of doing so) worked.
SGA $1550
McDonalds $14.80/hr starting
104.72 hours per month
26 hours a week, 5.236 hours a day, 5 day week.
@3:38
I'm not sure even in the highest paid counties in the US McD pays a starting wage of $14.80, that's basically double what they are offering in my neck of the woods. Also, the RFC is contemplated in a full-time context as a matter of law.
Minimum wage in California is $16. If it's for a large fast food employer it's $20 per hour.
$16 in NY as well
Can you say out of touch?
If you don't have a political agenda like cutting Social Security programs or creating bogeymen for people to hate, then it's helpful to look at the actual studies and figures on fraud incidence. It's pretty low at SSA compared to most programs.
In a system that processes millions of claims you can find a person with an anecdotal experience to fit almost any narrative. Yes, there are some cases of fraud. A small percentage of outliers can sustain full-time work despite meeting listing or grid rule requirements. However, if the percentage of fraud is low, and the rules make it expedient for a much larger number of people to timely get the benefits that they need and which the program is designed to provide, then the system works. All DeSantis did with his comment is to show that he doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
I think much confusion in popular off-the-cuff intuitions about the SS disability programs, arises from misconceptions about the meaning of the statutory SS disability standard. The standard does not require a medical condition that precludes all conceivable work or remuneration. Rather, it looks at documented/demonstrated medical limitations, together with age, education and work experience, to determine if there is a sufficiently "significant" quantum of gainful jobs in the region where the claimant lives or in several specific regions of the country to which the claimant can adjust and adapt in light of those vocational, medical and labor market limitations. Accordingly, a claimant found disabled who has a medical condition which does not prevent some work of some kind somewhere does not reflect a "fraud" or even an erroneous decision under the actual statutory standard. While one might then surmise that the nearly 60 year old statutory disability standard (mostly attributed to 1967 amendments)is just too generous, international comparisons with other developed western countries suggest otherwise and reflect that the US has one of the strictest disability standards and highest disability application rejection rates in that entire international cohort.
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