No, not lobbyists, silly! People on Social Security disability!
The Post is overselling the notion that SSDI creates an incentive for people with disabilities to abstain from work — and it is doing so while linking back to research on ailments of SSDI recipients that was published in 1995. In actuality, SSDI recipients are only eligible to receive benefits if the Social Security Administration agrees that their disability prevents them from working. According to the Center for American Progress(CAP), which analyzed data collected by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), eligibility requirements in the United States are already “among the strictest in the world” and program benefits “are less generous than most other countries’ disability benefit programs.” According to CAP, almost 80 percent of SSDI applicants are denied during the initial application and “thousands of applicants die” annually waiting to learn if they will receive assistance. Furthermore, CAP also found that disability recipients who are approved tend to skew older and had worked in physically demanding jobs before applying for benefits.
An April 9 blog from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) economist and co-founder Dean Baker browbeat the Post for complaining about people with disabilities not working when inequality is at an “unprecedented” level — the paper’s tone deafness is all the more apparent at a time when the wealthiest Americans live a decade longer than their low-income counterparts. Baker continued by pointing out that the benefits from SSDI are far from lavish, averaging a mere $1,170 a month, which amounts to less than a full-time job paying the federal minimum wage.
The editorial board closed its call for needlessly reforming SSDI by claiming that its aim is to “help people with disabilities retain the earnings and dignity that come from work,” an argument that mirrored rhetoric from the right-wing Heritage Foundation for a more “compassionate” policy of work incentives and dropping recipients after a set time on the program.
The Post’s repeated mischaracterization of SSDI follows a long history of misinformation from mainstream outlets, which often publish error-riddled stories filled with anecdotal evidence portraying disability recipients as undeserving. These pieces sound as if they come from right-wing media, which have spent yearsattacking the program and its recipients.
If only the Post hired people who actually knew enough about this to know how wrong they were. But that would require someone who didn’t go to an Ivy school, and that would be wrong.
For instance, my ex-husband tried for two years to get approved for disability while he was fighting cancer. The letter of approval finally arrived — the day after he died.
I’m so sorry about your ex-husband, what a travesty. And thanks for speaking out on this. I was given amazing amounts of misinformation about what was needed to get SSDI, and discouraged by several lawyers and a social worker to even apply. I ended up going through an attorney to get my benefits, and giving up a nice chunk of my first payment as part of the deal. And even then, there was a waiting period to get Medicare coverage.
I hear in other countries people don’t have to hire attorneys, present massive amounts of documentation, and line up a phalanx of doctors to prove that they deserve the benefits they paid for out of their years of work. I was in my mid-fifties when I applied. I had to give up the occupation I loved, and for which I had earned a PhD. I had used up most of my retirement savings (what was left after the crash), and without help from my family, there is no way I could afford to support myself and my son on what SSDI pays monthly. There is nothing I would love more than to go back to work, which is why I pay for medication (not covered by Medicare, by the way) and therapy (also not covered) and spend most of my day rehabilitating myself. With luck, by the time others are retiring, I will be back in the work force. If there is someone in the media we can bitch to, sign me up.
I actually know someone who got approved for partial SSDI who didn’t deserve it for the ailment he was claiming it for, but he’s crazy and addicted to various substances, and that probably factored into their decision, even though he believes he hid those facts from them. Doctors (at least the ones here in Oakland) aren’t as easily fooled as all that. They’ve seen it before. A lot. Lately.
I didn’t have any problems getting approved on the first try, which I’m told is not usual, but it did take three months and I was on the ragged edge of destitution by the time it came through. The circumstances of my claim were not ambiguous, and I easily cleared the hoops they had me hobble through. I had no resources whatsoever when I got out of rehab from my stroke barely able to walk on flat ground with a quad-cane.
Prior to my stroke, I worked for 32 years at various guitar-player-with-a-day-job type of jobs: line cook, truck driver, ground man at a tree service, appliance installer, warehouse manager, supervisor at an organic food delivery service,etc. Nothing that translates well into anything you can do sitting down.
All of those years being poor, I was always very aware of the chunk of my paycheck they took out for FICA, but I was always OK with paying it as it was the only insurance I had or could afford.
I do hope to be employable again, and I have worked my ass off for nine years trying to get that way, but when I had to be re-examined by their doctor last summer to continue qualifying, he signed off on it.
Maybe soon, as I am quite a bit better off than I was in 2008, but I’m just not there yet. (Side note on that subject, there is a Department of Rehabilitation in California, and I wonder what their funding status is now? Perhaps I should see what they can do while they are still around.)
My benefits are the sole income keeping two people alive, and while we don’t have much, I have more that 30 years experience at living acceptably on very little income, so I can’t complain.
I have read that in places with depressed economies, a lot of people turn to SSDI in last-ditch efforts at having incomes, but I haven’t seen that here, and if they all had to go through the same application process that I did, then there probably aren’t that many actual scammers receiving benefits. It can be done, as I stated above, but it is not easy; the guy I mentioned above had to get help from an attorney to get his partial claim approved, and how many scammers have attorneys helping them?
Actually, Doug, addiction is one of the things for which you can claim disability!