NPR: Federal disability payments exceed food stamps and welfare

[Winehole23]

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed....

The two big disability programs, including health care for disabled workers, cost some $260 billion a year.


What follows is a riveting and disheartening story of how the disabilty system "disappears" people from the workforce and making them permanently impoverished. Disability has become a defacto welfare system:


"That's a kind of ugly secret of the American labor market," David Autor, an economist at MIT, told me. "Part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low, until recently, is that a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs are on a different program."


http://media.reason.com/mc/_external/2013_03/welfaredisability.gif?h=418&w=450Planet Money

As part of the disabilty-industry complex, Jaffe-Walt details how states are hiring firms like the Public Consulting Group to contact welfare recipients to see if they can gin up enough evidence for some kind of disabilty. If they can, then the recipients can be shifted from state welfare rolls onto the federal disability system. She reports:


The company gets paid by the state every time it moves someone off of welfare and onto disability. In recent contract negotiations with Missouri, PCG asked for $2,300 per person. For Missouri, that's a deal -- every time someone goes on disability, it means Missouri no longer has to send them cash payments every month. For the nation as a whole, it means one more person added to the disability rolls.


The result of these depressing trends is:


...going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work. Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for.


The whole program is well worth heeding.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/25/the-human-costs-of-the-modern-disabilty

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

[Th'Pusher]

Thanks for the link. I heard part 2 of the All Things Considered piece this afternoon. This is indicative of the absolute jobs crisis in the US. Any suggestions on how to address the issue as there seems to be nothing being done at the federal level?

[boutons_deux]

Pretty obvious what's going.

Sociopathic Repugs must hate it. They cut unemployment benefits for the 47% moochers, and end up increasing govt spending on mostly LIFETIME disability, while it's much easier for people to go off unemployment into jobs, if the Repugs would stop blocking govt spending to "solve" the non-existent deficit problem.

[Winehole23]

This is indicative of the absolute jobs crisis in the US. Any suggestions on how to address the issue as there seems to be nothing being done at the federal level?I wouldn't call extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks nothing, but essentially the government can't make businesses hire because it can't make the economy grow. It's clear there's little political will for any WPA type solution, or even for infrastructure spending; direct hiring incentives would tend to increase the deficit, so that's basically out too.

Bubbles can take a while to unwind; it might be a few more years until we see robust economic recovery, supposing no new financial panic intervenes.

[boutons_deux]

NPR program this morning interviewed ex-middle class Portland OR people from an upcoming HBO show "American Winter", showing how people, "hard working" college educated, who thought they were set for life ended up requiring public assistance, foreclosed on, etc, etc.

"it might be a few more years until we see robust economic recovery"

aka "America's Lost Decade", for exactly the same reasons of Japan's Lost Decade, absence of government counter-cyclical spending. Krugman was/is right again.

austerity from the totally unnecessary, insane, counter-productive bullshit in the upcoming months will see 100Ks of lost jobs, reduced income (less income taxes).

[Winehole23]

aka "America's Lost Decade", for exactly the same reasons of Japan's Lost Decade, absence of government counter-cyclical spending. Krugman was/is right again.False. There was plenty of stimulus.

Japan took Krugman's advice. It didn't help.

[Winehole23]

btw, has the standard of living in Japan deteriorated during their so-called lost decade(s)?

[boutons_deux]

False. There was plenty of stimulus.

Japan took Krugman's advice. It didn't help.

You Lie (suckered by Repug LIES)

There wasn't plenty, except for the financial sector.

stimulus should have been $2T to $3T, not a few $100B.

[Winehole23]

was talking about Japan

[Winehole23]

anyway, stimulus doesn't make it any easier to unwind $Ts of bad debt.

[Winehole23]

the rabid tories at the Guardian weigh in:


How, then, should we regard a country that has 5% unemployment, the lowest income inequality, healthcare for all its people and is one of the world's leading exporters? This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in numeracy and literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the US and China by a country mile.


Doesn't that sound like a country from which Americans and others might learn a thing or two about how to get out of the hole in which we're stuck?


Not if that place is Japan. During and before the current economic crisis, few countries have been vilified as an economic basket case so much as Japan: it's been hard to find any reference to the country without some mention of its allegedly sclerotic economy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/04/double-dip-recession-fears-economy), its zombie banks, its deflation and slow economic growth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2010/aug/10/1). This malaise has even been called "Japan syndrome (http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2009/09/the_japan_syndrome)", sounding like a disease to warn policymakers, as in "you don't want to end up like Japan."


No one has been more influential in defining this narrative than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html). Throughout the 1990s, and still today (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/inflation-deflation-japan/), Krugman has skewered Japan's economy and leaders. In the late 1990s, Krugman wrote a series of gloom-and-doom articles, complete with equations and titles like "Japan's Trap" and "Setting Sun", bluntly stating:

"The state of Japan is a scandal, an outrage, a reproach … operating far below its productive capacity, simply because its consumers and investors do not spend enough."But let's look at some of the Japanese metrics during that time. Throughout the 1990s, the Japanese unemployment rate was – ready for this? – about 3%, half the US unemployment rate at the time. During that allegedly "lost decade", Japan also had universal healthcare, less inequality, the highest life expectancy, low infant mortality and low rates of crime and incarceration. Americans should be so lucky as to experience a Japanese-style lost decade.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/11/paul-krugman-japan-lost-decade

[boutons_deux]

anyway, stimulus doesn't make it any easier to unwind $Ts of bad debt.

US T-bonds aren't "bad debt". They are extremely cheap now, and totally trust worthy (unlike Cyprus bank accounts).

The best way to reduce the debt is to increase tax revenues, not by more cutting of spending, which will increase the debt.

[Winehole23]

aggregate spending on consumption of goods and services isn't everything, man.

[Winehole23]

US T-bonds aren't "bad debt". They are extremely cheap now, and totally trust worthy (unlike Cyprus bank accounts).was talking about real estate and real estate derivatives.

[TeyshaBlue]

was talking about real estate and real estate derivatives.

Not germane to the thinkprogess echo chamber.


Also, the premise that disability = poverty is a bit overstated. Depending upon the employer's disability plan or whether or not it's used in place of SSD, the amounts can be decent. I have 60% in my plan, but I can also buy up to 70% I think.

I know folks who do pretty well on 60%.

[Winehole23]

lagnaippe: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/the-true-story-of-japans-economic-success.html?_r=0

[Th'Pusher]

aggregate spending on consumption of goods and services isn't everything, man.
Oh really? That is absolutely what drives the US economy.

[Winehole23]

has for the last 30 years, based on unsound financial practices. perhaps that's not sustainable in the long run.

also, quality of life should count for something. cf. Japan's so-called lost decades.

[Winehole23]

GDP ain't the whole enchilada, just a picture of the whole enchilada. it ain't even a measure of whether the enchilada tastes good.

[boutons_deux]

aggregate spending on consumption of goods and services isn't everything, man.

it's only 70% of the economy.

[Winehole23]

so? you think quality of life is adequately expressed by the rate of GDP growth in the fucked/unfuckable UCA/1%er dominated US economy?

[TeyshaBlue]

lol...logic's a bitch.

[Winehole23]

stimulating aggregate consumption is the Keynesian medicine for deflation, not for the current situation. Th'Pusher asked, what do we do about unemployment now?

[Winehole23]

lol...logic's a bitch.I have a hard time seeing what the government can do to fix the economy or make businesses hire more. Little help?

[Winehole23]

Also, the premise that disability = poverty is a bit overstated. Depending upon the employer's disability plan or whether or not it's used in place of SSD, the amounts can be decent.good point.

does the graph in the article measure gross numbers on disability, or just SSD?



(honest question, do not know.)

[MannyIsGod]

False. There was plenty of stimulus.

Japan took Krugman's advice. It didn't help.

Assuming there was a better alternative. Sometimes the best option isn't all fun and games.

[MannyIsGod]

Not germane to the thinkprogess echo chamber.


Also, the premise that disability = poverty is a bit overstated. Depending upon the employer's disability plan or whether or not it's used in place of SSD, the amounts can be decent. I have 60% in my plan, but I can also buy up to 70% I think.

I know folks who do pretty well on 60%.

This is government funded disability and not a company provided disability insurance. (I believe those are 2 seperate things but I'm not fully sure)

[MannyIsGod]

I'm assuming this is pretty much what was on This American Life this past weekend.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

Pretty damn good piece by the Planet Money group. Give it a listen.

[TeyshaBlue]

This is government funded disability and not a company provided disability insurance. (I believe those are 2 seperate things but I'm not fully sure)

Whoops...my bad. Yep, they're different animals.

[Winehole23]

Assuming there was a better alternative. Sometimes the best option isn't all fun and games.as pointed out in the Fingleton article posted upstream, the demise of Japan and the poor condition of its economy have been greatly overstated. there's way more to economic analysis than bottom line GDP growth.

[TeyshaBlue]

Whoops...my bad. The chart and article discuss Fed spending on disability, and yep, they're different animals.

[TeyshaBlue]

Shit. That was supposed to be an edit. *Going for more coffee*

[Th'Pusher]

as pointed out in the Fingleton article posted upstream, the demise of Japan and the poor condition of its economy have been greatly overstated. there's way more to economic analysis than bottom line GDP growth.

And no mention of Japan's public debt. You ok with running +200% debt as a % of GDP?

[Winehole23]

never considered it, tbh. seems like that would depend in part on what the borrowing is for and how long debt levels remain elevated.

what are the pros and cons and has 200 to 1 debt/GDP demonstrably hurt Japan? has it helped?

[Winehole23]

did you have a point, TP, or was that rhetorical?

[Winehole23]

Just as the bar for disability fell, the economy turned on the working class. Factories laid off their assembly workers. The service sector picked up the slack. Wages stagnated for anyone without a college diploma. These changes have made disability more attractive for reasons both obvious and subtle. Although program's payments are small -- the average benefit is a bit over $1,000 per month -- they're not much worse than a minimum wage job. Better yet, they're indexed to inflation, meaning they sometimes rise faster than wages, and come with generous government healthcare. For former blue-collar workers who feel they've lost all hope of finding employment, or who don't want to spend their last years leading to retirement standing all day at McDonald's, disability isn't a bad offer.

It's little surprise then that, as MIT's Autor notes, disability applications tend to rise and fall with the unemployment rate (as shown in his chart below), or that most applications come from workers who have recently lost jobs.



http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Disability_Unemployment_Rate.pngIf you're a conservative, the reasons to worry about all this are obvious. There are probably a couple million people who could work if absolutely necessary, and are instead choosing to subsist on taxpayer money. The system, from that perspective, is simply being abused.



But the failures here should be obvious to liberals, too. If the job market is so miserably weak that these workers cannot find jobs -- that they are choosing to live in government-guaranteed poverty rather than take a chance on the labor market -- we need to find a better solution than paying them to sit while their skills atrophy. As of now, that's all we seem to be doing. Despite Clinton-era changes to the program that made it possible for participants to ease back into the work force without losing all their benefits, less than one percent of Americans who go on disability ever leave the program.


Moreover, that program, is headed for bankruptcy. As of last year, Social Security's disability trust fund was on pace to run dry by 2016 (http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee12-pr.html), which would lead to an automatic 21 percent benefit cut (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-30/politics/35456380_1_disability-program-disability-benefits-disability-trust-fund) affecting all of the program's participants, including the millions who truly can't work because of their impairments.



Like I said, even if we wanted a new welfare program for the struggling poor, this wouldn't be the way to run it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disability-insurance-americas-124-billion-secret-welfare-program/274302/

[Th'Pusher]

did you have a point, TP, or was that rhetorical?

The point was that while unemployment is low and the quality of life is high, Japan also has what, in the US, would be considered unsustainable public debt. I am not sure that your claim that GDP is not the 'whole enchilada' while using Japan as an example is all that applicable.

[Winehole23]

Just as the bar for disability fell, the economy turned on the working class. Factories laid off their assembly workers. The service sector picked up the slack. Wages stagnated for anyone without a college diploma. These changes have made disability more attractive for reasons both obvious and subtle. Although program's payments are small -- the average benefit is a bit over $1,000 per month -- they're not much worse than a minimum wage job. Better yet, they're indexed to inflation, meaning they sometimes rise faster than wages, and come with generous government healthcare. For former blue-collar workers who feel they've lost all hope of finding employment, or who don't want to spend their last years leading to retirement standing all day at McDonald's, disability isn't a bad offer.

It's little surprise then that, as MIT's Autor notes, disability applications tend to rise and fall with the unemployment rate (as shown in his chart below), or that most applications come from workers who have recently lost jobs.



http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Disability_Unemployment_Rate.png
If you're a conservative, the reasons to worry about all this are obvious. There are probably a couple million people who could work if absolutely necessary, and are instead choosing to subsist on taxpayer money. The system, from that perspective, is simply being abused.



But the failures here should be obvious to liberals, too. If the job market is so miserably weak that these workers cannot find jobs -- that they are choosing to live in government-guaranteed poverty rather than take a chance on the labor market -- we need to find a better solution than paying them to sit while their skills atrophy. As of now, that's all we seem to be doing. Despite Clinton-era changes to the program that made it possible for participants to ease back into the work force without losing all their benefits, less than one percent of Americans who go on disability ever leave the program.


Moreover, that program, is headed for bankruptcy. As of last year, Social Security's disability trust fund was on pace to run dry by 2016 (http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee12-pr.html), which would lead to an automatic 21 percent benefit cut (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-30/politics/35456380_1_disability-program-disability-benefits-disability-trust-fund) affecting all of the program's participants, including the millions who truly can't work because of their impairments.



Like I said, even if we wanted a new welfare program for the struggling poor, this wouldn't be the way to run it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disability-insurance-americas-124-billion-secret-welfare-program/274302/

[Winehole23]

The point was that while unemployment is low and the quality of life is high, Japan also has what, in the US, would be considered unsustainable public debt. I am not sure that your claim that GDP is not the 'whole enchilada' while using Japan as an example is all that applicable.it's applicable regardless of the example.

quantity and quality are not commensurable; aggregate statistics reveal little about the condition or sustainability of the system, still less about the quality of life of the people within it.

[boutons_deux]

so? you think quality of life is adequately expressed by the rate of GDP growth in the fucked/unfuckable UCA/1%er dominated US economy?

absolutely not, straw man

If median income had kept up with GDP growth, it would be $92K (high quality of (creature comfort) life, not $52K, because the fucked/unfuckable/UCA/1% have grabbed the majority of income growth from the 99%.

[Th'Pusher]

it's applicable regardless of the example.

quantity and quality are not commensurable; aggregate statistics reveal little about the condition or sustainability of the system, still less about the quality of life of the people within it.

I agree with you WRT quality of life being important, but there are other cultural differences between the US and Japan that drive that number, making the comparison arguable. But specific to unemployment, is Japan able to maintain low unemployment because of high targeted govt spending (~42% of GDP)? I honestly don't know...

[Winehole23]

it was boutons who originally made the comparison b/w the US and Japan. like you, I see more dissimilarities than similarities.

[BobaFett1]

4 Hours Ago #12
boutons_deux the leftist talking points

[CosmicCowboy]

Almost 40% of the Federal disability claims are "back pain". WTF?

[Winehole23]

pain is very subjective, until you're the patient.

[Wild Cobra]

WH...

You can collect SS and still work.

[rjv]

you can collect DIB (provided you have the necessary work credits), not SSI (supplemental security income)-and still work as long as the work is primarily sedentary in nature and the income from that job does not meet the defining criteria for SGA (substantial gainful activity)

[TeyshaBlue]

you can collect DIB (provided you have the necessary work credits), not SSI (supplemental security income)-and still work as long as the work is primarily sedentary in nature and the income from that job does not meet the defining criteria for SGA (substantial gainful activity)

As I understand it, it's somewhere around the $800/mo mark for most.

[rjv]

As I understand it, it's somewhere around the $800/mo mark for most.

SSI caps off at 694.00 per month and you can get medicaid. DIB is based on work credits (they only go back 10 years, you get 1 per X amount made every quarter) and it comes with medicare. the amt on DIB usually is between 1000 and 1500 per month but it can sometimes be higher. you also get a back pay amt, if approved. usually 8 out of 10 claims are denied.

[TeyshaBlue]

SSI caps off at 694.00 per month and you can get medicaid. DIB is based on work credits (they only go back 10 years, you get 1 per X amount made every quarter) and it comes with medicare. the amt on DIB usually is between 1000 and 1500 per month but it can sometimes be higher. you also get a back pay amt, if approved. usually 8 out of 10 claims are denied.

I was talking about the amount you could earn but I was going on heresay primarily. Don't know much bout this, and I hope I don't have to learn it.:lol

[rjv]

I was talking about the amount you could earn but I was going on heresay primarily. Don't know much bout this, and I hope I don't have to learn it.:lol

nor do i...for SSI i think the limit is around 1050.00 per household. SGA varies but generally if it is around 1200.00 or so it will probably get you denied

[Th'Pusher]

Does anyone know if veteran's disability claims accounted for in the stats in the op?

[boutons_deux]

vets? expensive, for a 100 years

US Still Paying Billions in Benefits to Deal With Psychological Effects of War

More than $40 billion annually is being paid out to soldiers and survivors of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War in 1898, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.


Two children of Civil War veterans -- one in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina -- are each receiving $876 a year. Another 10 are getting benefits, averaging about $5,000 a year, connected to the 1898 Spanish-American War.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/15298-us-still-paying-survivor-benefits-to-c

[Th'Pusher]

Understood they're expensive, but wondering if they're includeded in the disability claims cited in the op or are these accounted for separately under the VA.

[ElNono]

good point.

does the graph in the article measure gross numbers on disability, or just SSD?

(honest question, do not know.)

You have to add that some people on disability also augment their earnings with long-term disability insurance, if their last job included such coverage. In many cases, that's a for-life benefit that augments the federal benefit, and I suspect it also discourages some of that people from taking on low income jobs they might be able to do.

[boutons_deux]

Understood they're expensive, but wondering if they're includeded in the disability claims cited in the op or are these accounted for separately under the VA.

Whether vet payments are included or not, seems like vets are getting screwed, under-spent :

A new study released on Tuesday (http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/Returning-Home-from-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.aspx?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Tweet&utm_campaign=Hootsuite) by the Institute of Medicine found that the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Departments are not providing adequate care for the 44 percent of U.S. troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have “reported difficulties after they returned,” such as mental and physical ailments.


“Although several federal agencies are actively trying to address the support needs of current and former service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their families, the response has been slow and has not matched the magnitude of this population’s requirements as many cope with a complex set of health, economic, and other challenges,” said report co-author George Rutherford.

Among its findings, the report said (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/26/us-veterans-inadequate-care-war) the VA and DOD should properly assess whether certain treatments for returning troops are effective and that they should “link and integrate” their databases to track personnel issues more closely. The report also said DOD and the VA should “expand its definition of family” to include unmarried partners, same sex couples, single parents and stepfamilies and it questioned the DOD’s policy that bans preventing vets access to private weapons “even if a service member is at risk from suicide.”

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/03/27/1780021/national-security-brief-report-veterans-health-care/

[TeyshaBlue]

Understood they're expensive, but wondering if they're includeded in the disability claims cited in the op or are these accounted for separately under the VA.

A little reading reveals that Vets can apply for SSDI benefits, so I assume they are included in the OP's figures. Vets also receive thru the VA, which is separate for SS.

http://www.ssa.gov/woundedwarriors/

[Th'Pusher]

A little reading reveals that Vets can apply for SSDI benefits, so I assume they are included in the OP's figures. Vets also receive thru the VA, which is separate for SS.

http://www.ssa.gov/woundedwarriors/

Thanks. It seems plausible that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be one factor driving the the increase in disability claims

[TeyshaBlue]

Thanks. It seems plausible that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be one factor driving the the increase in disability claims

Definitely plausible but pretty hard to quantify. Probably have to dig quite a bit to get to those figures.

[rjv]

biggest disability that would be claimed would be PTSD (asides from the obvious physical ones). if a vet is service connected he or she can still get that (from the VA) as well as DIB from the SSA. but, that vet would most likely not be eligible for SSI.

[Winehole23]

counterpoint:



Here's a U Illinois professor respectfully critiquing (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lennard-davis/npr-reporter-chana-joffew_b_2971443.html) the piece on the Huffington Post:

Ms. Joffe-Walt, who is neither an economist nor a specialist on disability, is making a claim that in an economics class would be red penciled with the corrective...

The logical error in her reporting comes from simply assuming that the rising number of people on disability is the result of the collusion between poor unemployed people and cash-strapped states. But the reality may be closer to the fact that the Baby Boomer generation, as it ages, becomes more and more subject to impairments that lead to disabilities. Since a third of people with disabilities are those with mental disorders, it is also no surprise that the dramatic rise in diagnoses of depression, OCD, and autism in the same period have had an impact on these statistics.


In These Times (http://ourwww.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14787/how_this_american_life_got_disability_wrong/) and the great Dean Baker (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/planet-money-misses-the-boat-on-social-security-disability) also went after the Planet Money piece with padded kid gloves; perhaps they were thrown off by the fatal assumption that Planet Money and NPR are on the same progressive team as they.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/unfit-to-report/91a288b5c7cea791a100ae436dcf97e69373d662/

[mouse]

SSI. $$$$ Is just a phone call away!



youtube[/fzUEU4sYw6g

[boutons_deux]

Right-Wing Media Miss The Facts On Disability Fraud

Right-wing media misleadingly hyped a congressional hearing to falsely claim that disability fraud is leading to increased claims and depleting the Social Security Disability Trust Fund.

However, testimony from a Social Security Administration official at the hearing revealed that fraud is not a major problem in the disability program and demographic changes explain increased disability claims.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/06/28/right-wing-media-miss-the-facts-on-disability-f/194669