AynRandy's Disturbing World

First, in the Tribble-Toupeed One's Disturbing World, the notoriously suspicious and chintzy SSI program, which rejects 60 percent of all claims and which pays an average of $1,100 per month on claims it does approve, is actually sending millions of dollars every month to every person who fakes a bad back or wakes up one morning feeling a little blue.

Steven M:

Steve Benen notes that government monitors don't see all the fraud Rand Paul claims to see:

Not too long ago the Inspector General of Social Security Administration did a thorough investigation of fraud in the disability-insurance program. The result was striking: less than 0.3% of disability payments were improper. (Or put another way, about 99.8% of the payments were legit.) When the Government Accountability Office went looking for disability fraud, it came up with similar findings.

Digby:

It was startling to see physician and Senator Rand Paul claim the other day that people on disability were faking bad backs and anxiety to get on the dole and cheat the taxpayers. These are real ailments, sometimes totally debilitating, as anyone who has suffered from either can tell you. Severe back pain can make it impossible to work at any job, even those which only require sitting. Anxiety disorder is a terrible condition that can even make some people unable to even leave their house. What kind of medical doctor would deny such a thing? (If you answered, “one who will willingly trade his professional integrity for political points” you’d be right.)

But this is actually part of the GOP’s ongoing quest to degrade “entitlements” and make America’s health care system the worst in the world for anyone who isn’t wealthy. Their ongoing attack on Obamacare opened up a window to their underlying philosophy about affordable health care. (They’re not for it.) And now they are taking legislative aim at the Supplemental Security Income portion of the Social Security System. This is the program that makes it possible for people with disabilities to live without begging on the streets. Despite the fact that the congress has always routinely pushed money back and forth between the retirement and disability portions of the program as the need occurred, the Republicans in congress have decided that they no longer support doing such a thing. The result, if they have their way, would be to cut the meager stipends of millions of disable Americans within the next year.

Rand Paul also thinks vaccines cause "profound mental disorders."  But does he think people brain-damaged from vaccines should receive disability benefits?  Of course not.

Not convinced AynRandy is a motherfucking liar?  Dave Baker has more.

Want to get rid of slackers, moochers and takers?  Let's start with AynRandy, who can't be bothered to get the actual facts about Social Security Disability - a program that keeps a significant number of his Kentucky constituents from starving to death in the streets - and who thinks you're too stupid to figure out he's lying.

The brillo-headed little rat is a Total Dick. Charlie Pierce has the line "have I mentioned lately what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is."  We need something similar for Rand Paul.
 

Disability Insurance's Real Fraud is How Stingy It Is

I am personally acquainted with people who fraudulently applied for disability insurance they didn't qualify for, and were justifiably denied.

I am personally acquainted with people who correctly applied for disabiity insurance they did qualify for, but were unjustifiably denied, and ended up penniless, homeless and hopeless.

I am personally acquainted with people who were unjustifiably denied but who persisted in appealing that denial and eventually got the disability insurance to which they, as disabled members of the community, were entitled.

But I have never yet met or seen good evidence of that mythical creature, the person who fraudulently applied for disability insurance they didn't quality for, but received anyway.

George Zornick at The Nation:

It certainly gave a frightening impression. But viewers got little valuable information about the actual fraud rates for SSDI. Kroft didn’t interview any policy experts, nor any spokespeople for the program nor anyone who actually receives benefits.

Had he done so, viewers might have learned the following:

- According to the OECD, the United States has among the most restrictive and least generous disability benefit systems in the developed world—behind only South Korea.

- Two-thirds of SSDI applicants are denied on the first application. More than 60 percent are denied even after all appeals are complete.

- SSDI is funded through payroll tax contributions, and is provided to workers who have contributed enough through payroll taxes to be insured.

- There is an answer to Coburn’s question of “where did all these disabled people come from?” Demographics explain nearly all of it, and this rise in SSDI applicants was predicted as far back as 1994. Growth in the US population, the baby-boom generation entering its high-disability years and the surge of women who entered the workplace in the 1970s and 1980s and became insured under SSDI all contributed to the natural rise in beneficiaries.

- As baby boomers reach the retirement age, the SSDI growth has already begun to level off and will decline in coming years.

- There will be a shortfall in SSDI benefits beginning in 2016, but the program can pay 79 to 80 percent of benefits through 2086.

- To reach solvency, Congress would simply have to enact a modest reallocation of payroll taxes from the retirement side of Social Security to the disability side, as it has done eleven times in the past to respond to demographic changes. In other words, SSDI is a very strict program that denies far more people than it accepts, and needs a modest congressional fix to stay at full solvency. An interesting issue, for certain—but nothing like the benefit-sucking dystopia portrayed by 60 Minutes.

SNIP

Advocates like Vallas are naturally frustrated. “These media reports do a tremendous disservice to viewers as well as to people with disabilities,” she told The Nation. “Any misuse of these vital programs is unacceptable; however, it is unfortunate and disappointing when media reports mislead their viewers by painting entire programs with the brush of one or a few bad apples, without putting them in the context of the millions of individuals who receive benefits appropriately, and for whom they are a vital lifeline.”