Posted on 01/28/2013 7:35:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Social Security will eventually hit the wall, but Social Security Disability Insurance may hit the wall even before Obama heads off to a permanent vacation on the many golf courses of Hawaii or rewrites the Living Constitution to become Emperor of Post-America.
Over the long term, Social Security and Medicare have promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits than the nation can pay for under current policies. But Social Security’s disability trust fund is in even worse shape, and current estimates say by 2016 it won’t have enough money to pay full benefits.
The fiscal security of the disability trust fund got rapidly worse as the unemployment rate rose. The number of applications has almost doubled in the last 10 years, from 1.5 million a year in 2001 to more than 2.8 million a year in 2012.
Obama has said little about how he would fix the fund’s finances.
Blame Republicans. That always works. The SSDI situation has gotten so bad because the system is clearly being abused. There’s no other explanation for such a dramatic hike in claims.
The number of US workers claiming disability insurance increased by 22 percent in 5 years, coinciding with an economic recession.
1.6 million Americans got on the disability rolls, moving them up from 7.1 million to 8.7 million. And 99 percent of the people on those rolls stay on them until retirement age. And the total cost of all that is around 130 billion dollars a year.
Over 5 percent of the working age population is on disability. That’s rather high. Either construction sites have decided to dump hard harts and every lunch room has decided to start cooking with plutonium, or there’s something else at work here.
Eberstadt points out that in 1960, only one-fifth of disability benefits went to those with “mood disorders” and “musculoskeletal” problems. In 2011, nearly half of those on disability voiced such complaints.
Everyone better get on disability now before it goes bust. Pretty soon the U.S. will be so poor it can only support other counties.
Disability doesn't have to be work related. There is a lot of fraud, but there are also a lot of baby boomers who are a few years short of retirement and can't do their jobs anymore due to physical ailments. If the money they paid into SSDI all their lives had been invested the money would be there. But of course the pols just spent it.
Dems are trying to turn Disability into the new welfare - welfare without the pesky social workers or time requirement. Welfare that can go one for 50, 6o years... Of course the scammers will bankrupt the system. And when they do, those people who really are disabled will probably die if they don’t have family to take them in. But the scammers don’t care - they’ll just move on to the next scam.
More great news.
GWB was telling us SS was going broke and the media called him an idiot.
Now that SS is on the verge of bankruptcy and Nero fiddles while Rome burns, the media calls Nero a genius and shrieks like pre-teen girls at a boy-band concert in his presence.
I guess I’ll have to work until I’m 75 before I can retire.
More great news.
GWB was telling us SS was going broke and the media called him an idiot.
Now that SS is on the verge of bankruptcy and Nero fiddles while Rome burns, the media calls Nero a genius and shrieks like pre-teen girls at a boy-band concert in his presence.
I guess I’ll have to work until I’m 75 before I can retire.
People take advantage of the system. I read it is hard for a Dr. to not agree, if you say you are disabled.
Obama/Libtard solutions:
1. Rich is not paying their fair share. They’ve somehow managed to avoid paying their fair share, even after we said with the prior tax increases they were now paying their fair share.
2. You aren’t making the right choices with your money. The government will penalize you with whatever applicable sin tax(es) is/are appropriate.
3. We’ll bump the retirement age up again.
4. We’ll redefine “rich” again for the umpteenth time and repeat 1. After amnesty we’ll have another 11-20 million illegal (now legal) people you’ll have to start paying benefits for. You can’t just duck out on your responsibilities to them. That’s not your money.
5. Remember, the money you earn, that’s not your money. You didn’t earn it.
I can't be surprised. I didn't set out to find examples of blatant fraud, but I have run across three "families who are unemployed, undereducated, on many welfare programs, exhausted unemployment, and have applied for permanent disability and are about to get it.
All the while traveling long distances twice a month to---
---visit gambling casinos! and bragging about it.
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