How to Fix Poverty: Write Every Family a Basic Income Check

[Karee 4,190]

if the only people i know on disability are actually disabled, does that mean i live in an alternate universe?

Yes.

[decocker 7,198]

Yes.

i knew it.

Thanks for sharing the story.. I think this is a good idea. We need to get past the "what is fair" question and realize that the whole infrastructure created for providing the various forms of welfare and who qualifies is more wasteful than just providing the bare minimum for everyone regardless of income (and it has to be everyone because we don't want to waste resources determining who qualifies beyond say being in the country legally).

so are we just giving all the welfare to natives?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

if the only people i know on disability are actually disabled, does that mean i live in an alternate universe?

You should have learned by now that anecdotes only count when they support the right wing viewpoint.

[Karee 4,190]

Disability, USA

Steve Kroft reports on the alarming state of the federal disability program, which has exploded in size and could run out of money

The following script is from "Disability, USA" which aired on Oct. 6, 2013. The correspondent is Steve Kroft. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis, producers.

There is a Senate hearing scheduled tomorrow on a subject of some importance to millions of Americans, but with the government shutdown it's not clear that the Senate Committee on Government Affairs will be able to pay for a stenographer to record the event. The hearing involves the Federal Disability Insurance Program, which could become the first government benefits program to run out of money. When it began back in the 1950s it was envisioned as a small program to assist people who were unable to work because of illness or injury.

Today, it serves nearly 12 million people -- up 20 percent in the last six years -- and has a budget of $135 billion. That's more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined. It's been called a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud. A lot of people want to know what's going on. Especially Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

Tom Coburn: Go read the statute. If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That's pretty clear. So, where'd all those disabled people come from?

The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy. But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations -- who's also a physician -- says it's more complicated than that. Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved -- another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.

Tom Coburn: If all these people are disabled that apply, I want 'em all to get it. And then we need to figure out how we're going to fund it. But my investigation tells me and my common sense tells me that we got a system that's being gamed pretty big right now.

And by a lot of different people exploiting a vulnerable system. Coburn says you need look no further than the commercials of disability lawyers trolling for new clients. Namely, the two thirds of the people who have already applied for disability and been rejected. There's not much to lose, really. It doesn't cost you anything unless you win the appeal and the lawyers collect from the federal government.

Marilyn Zahm: If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits.

Marilyn Zahm and Randy Frye are two of the country's 1,500 disability judges. They are also the president and vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges. They are each expected to read, hear, and decide up to 700 appeals a year to clear a backlog of nearly a million cases. They say disability lawyers have flooded the system with cases that shouldn't be there.

Marilyn Zahm: In 1971, fewer than 20 percent of claimants were represented. Now, over 80 percent of claimants are represented by attorneys or representatives.

Steve Kroft: Why do you think there's so many more lawyers involved in this than there used to be?

Marilyn Zahm: It's lucrative.

Randy Frye: Follow the money.

Last year the Social Security Administration paid a billion dollars to claimants' lawyers out of its cash-strapped disability trust fund. The biggest chunk -- $70 million - went to Binder & Binder, the largest disability firm in the country. Lawyer Jenna Fliszar and Jessica White worked for Binder & Binder representing clients in front of disability judges from New Hampshire to West Virginia.

Jenna Fliszar: I call it a legal factory because that's all it is. I mean, they have figured out the system and they've made it into a huge national firm that makes millions of dollars a year on Social Security disability.

Jessica White: I was hired at the end of 2008 and business was booming because the economy was so bad. We had a lot of people who -- their unemployment ran out and this was the next step.

Jenna Fliszar: If you're unable to find a job, and you have any type of physical issue, then it really becomes a last ditch effort because the job market is so bad.

Many of the cases they handled involved ailments with subjective symptoms like backache, depression and fibromyalgia, which is joint and muscle pain along with chronic fatigue.

Steve Kroft: Hard to prove you've got it?

Jenna Fliszar: Yes. And there's really no diagnostic testing for it.

Steve Kroft: Hard to deny you don't have it.

Jenna Fliszar: Correct.

Steve Kroft: Out of the hundreds of people that you represented, how many of these cases involved strong cases for disability?

Jenna Fliszar: Strong cases I would say maybe 30 percent to 40 percent. And then I would say half of my cases were not deserving of disability.

Steve Kroft: How many of them ultimately ended up getting benefits?

Jenna Fliszar: Half.

We tried repeatedly to reach Binder & Binder for comment, but our phone calls were not returned.

Tom Coburn: We ought to err on the side of somebody being potentially disabled. And we have a ton of people in our country that are, but what's coming about now with where we are, is the very people who are truly disabled, because we have so many scallywags in the system, are going to get hurt severely when this trust fund runs outta money.

Sen. Coburn says disability payments are now propping up the economy in some of the poorest regions in the country. Which is why he sent his investigators to the border area of Kentucky and West Virginia.

More than a quarter of a million people in this area are on disability -- 10 to 15 percent of the population -- about three times the national average. Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver processed disability claims at the Social Security regional office in Huntington, West Virginia.

Steve Kroft: How important are disability checks to people in this part of the country?

Jennifer Griffith: They're a vital part of our economy. A lot of people depend on them to survive.

To see it first hand, they suggested we come back right after the disability checks went out. And we did, to find crowds and traffic jams.

Jennifer Griffith: You avoid the pharmacy. You avoid Wal-Mart. You avoid, you know, restaurants because it's just--

Sarah Carver: Any grocery stores.

Jennifer Griffith: It's just extremely crowded. Everybody's received their benefits. Let's go shopping.

Not everyone in the throngs we saw is on disability, but Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver say there's no question that a lot of them are and probably shouldn't be.

Sarah Carver: We have a lot of people who have exhausted their unemployment checks and have moved onto Social Security disability.

Steve Kroft: This is, sort of, a bridge between unemployment and collecting Social Security.

Sarah Carver: Generally, yes.

Steve Kroft: Are they disabled?

Sarah Carver: Not always, no.

Jennifer Griffith: More often than not, no.

Around here, people call it "getting on the draw" or "getting on the check," but they have other names for it.

Sarah Carver: I think you could call it a scheme. You could call it a scam. You could call it fraud. I mean, there's different definitions for it.

Steve Kroft: Large scale?

Jennifer Griffith: Very large scale.

They began complaining to their bosses at the Social Security Administration six years ago after discovering that an outsized number of claims and some questionable medical evidence was being submitted by Eric Conn, a flamboyant attorney whose face is plastered on billboards throughout the area and on local TV.

He runs the third largest disability practice in the country out of the Eric C. Conn Law Center which is just off Route 23 in Stanville, Ky. It's a complex of several doublewides welded together with an imposing replica of the Lincoln Memorial in the parking lot. Surprisingly, it has only one space for the disabled.

Steve Kroft: I mean, it's kinda hard to miss Eric Conn around here, isn't it, with all the billboards and--

Jennifer Griffith: You'd be hard pressed to find somebody who doesn't know who he is in this area.

Steve Kroft: He calls himself Mr. Social Security. And some of his ads say "guaranteed success." How can he make that claim?

Sarah Carver: He backs that up.

Steve Kroft: A slam dunk?

Sarah Carver: Uh-huh (affirm). Pretty much.

Steve Kroft: That's a remarkable record.

Sarah Carver: Yes, it is.

Steve Kroft: Is he that good a lawyer?

Sarah Carver:: You know--

Jennifer Griffith: No. (laugh)

A lot of Conn's success, they say, had to do with a particularly friendly disability judge, David Daugherty, who sought out Conn's cases and approved virtually all 1,823 of them, awarding a half a billion dollars worth of lifetime benefits to Conn's clients. The decisions were based on the recommendations of a loyal group of doctors who often examined Conn's clients right in his law offices and always endorsed them for the disability rolls.

Steve Kroft: Were most of the medical reports submitted by the same doctors?

Jennifer Griffith: Yes.

Sarah Carver: Yes. Sometimes up to 13 to 20 reports a day.

Jennifer Griffith: I know on one, we counted 16 exams by the same doctor all in one day at his office.

Steve Kroft: And they were all approved?

Jennifer Griffith: They were all approved.

Steve Kroft: Were all those valid claims?

Sarah Carver: There's no way that you're going to have 100 percent of clients walk through your door and be disabled. 100 percent of claimants, there's no way.

We were hoping that given Eric Conn's outgoing personality and love of publicity, he would be eager to talk to us, but that turned out not to be the case. At first we were told he wasn't in the office. We said we'd wait.

----Snip------

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/disability-usa/

You should have learned by now that anecdotes only count when they support the right wing viewpoint.

Yeah right. Two way street dontchyathink?

[decocker 7,198]

You should have learned by now that anecdotes only count when they support the right wing viewpoint.

i'm confused by the existence of rw welfare recipients. how does that even happen.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Yeah right. Two way street dontchyathink?

Nope.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Dude I have more family members than I can count collecting disability, and the only thing wrong with the majority of them is that they're allergic to working. So take the sob story somewhere else.

Can you ask them, how they did it and I can let my good friend in Nashville how avoid wasting so much time in limbo, waiting for her claim to be processed, rejected, refiled, rejected again, then using a lawyer refiled, having to do multiple medical tests to reconfirm her blindness in one eye, half of her face being paralyzed, deafness in one ear, narcolepsy, being forced to move back in with her parents, before finally getting approved. Edited December 17, 2014 by InKorea

[Karee 4,190]

Can you ask then how they did it and I can let my good friend in Nashville how avoid wasting so much time in limbo, waiting for her claim to be processed, rejected, refiled, rejected again, then using a lawyer refiled, having to do multiple medical tests to reconfirm her blindness in one eye, half of her face being paralyzed, deafness in one ear, narcolepsy, being forced to move back in with her parents.

Sounds like she needs a better lawyer. May I suggest binder and binder?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Sounds like she needs a better lawyer. May I suggest binder and binder?

That was funny.

[Operator 1,927]

If a condition reduces your productivity by 15% social security is supposed to consider you disabled.....

FACT: Facebook should be considered #1 disability in the US today along with instagram, VJ, restless leg syndrome (aka Jimmy Leg), PMS and hangovers.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Sounds like she needs a better lawyer. May I suggest binder and binder?

I guess she's not as adept at milking the system as your relatives. Which just goes to show how the system rewards bad behavior while screwing over everyone else. Thanks Republican ideology.

Are you by any chance related to the White family in West Virginia?

[decocker 7,198]

I guess she's not as adept at milking the system as your relatives. Which just goes to show how the system rewards bad behavior while screwing over everyone else. Thanks Republican ideology.

Are you by any chance related to the White family in West Virginia?

hey now, leave the wild and wonderful whites out of this.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

i'm confused by the existence of rw welfare recipients. how does that even happen.

Most welfare recipients live in red states. Not only are they poor, they have masochistic tendencies, too.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Sounds like she needs a better lawyer. May I suggest binder and binder?

That's real funny. I am sure my friend who, did I mention had a brain tumour removed?, would find that real funny. Never mind that she and her husband had a new born at the time. Yeah real funny wit. You should do stand up. My friend and her family could have found themselves homeless, but never mind, so long as you get your jollies, who cares?

On the bright side. At least her lawyer got to make some money, right? How about instead of playing whack a mole with people who have just gone through a terrible life event, and creating a industry built on the suffering of others, we actually figure out a way to help people, because it's the right thing to do? Perhaps then we would not have so many people who feel that the system is inhuman and therefore believe it okay to take what they can get?

[Karee 4,190]

That's real funny. I am sure my friend who, did I mention had a brain tumour removed?, would find that real funny. Never mind that she and her husband had a new born at the time. Yeah real funny wit. You should do stand up. My friend and her family could have found themselves homeless, but never mind, so long as you get your jollies, who cares?

On the bright side. At least her lawyer got to make some money, right? How about instead of playing whack a mole with people who have just gone through a terrible life event, and creating a industry built on the suffering of others, we actually figure out a way to help people, because it's the right thing to do? Perhaps then we would not have so many people who feel that the system is inhuman and therefore believe it okay to take what they can get?

I didn't realize this was your first time visiting an internet message board. My apologies. A little info on how these things work.

a. I had no idea about your firend and her problems. Sounds like she has it rough, but my mind reading skills are lacking, so I had no clue.

b. Even if I was able to read your mind through my computer, how is it my problem?

c. Sounds like you have some anger issues. May I suggest a mild tranquilizer. You don't seem to be so far gone that you would require Haldol or Thorazine, but try and take it easy. I'm not sure if Obamacare covers IAS (Interenet Anger Syndrome) Maybe you can use it to collect disability, not sure. Contact Binder esq. and run it by him.