DISABILITY EPIDEMIC: More than 10 million Americans are getting disability payments through Social Security, but the well is running dry.
Posted on 08/18/2013 7:45:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
By Eric Boehm | Watchdog.org
New numbers from the Social Security Administration show more than 76,000 workers were added to the disability insurance program in July.
Since the beginning of 2013, more than 530,000 workers have been added to the Social Security disability program’s rolls. More than 8.9 million Americans are receiving disability benefits through Social Security, with an average benefit of $1,129 per month.
DISABILITY EPIDEMIC: More than 10 million Americans are getting disability payments through Social Security, but the well is running dry.
Adding benefits paid to spouses and children of disabled workers to the mix, the number of recipients totals more than 10.9 million with an average benefit of about $900 per month.
The rapid growth in the disability program – enrollments are up 15 percent since 2009 – is causing concern. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the disability insurance program will be broke as soon as 2018.
“Without legislative action to reduce the DI programs outlays, increase its dedicated federal revenues, or transfer other federal funds to it, the Social Security Administration will not have the legal authority to pay full DI benefits beyond that point,” the CBO concluded in a 2010 analysis of the fund.
Officially, the growth in disability payments is blamed on an aging population.
“The sheer number of baby boomers is going from about 35 million now to about 70 million in a couple of decades,” Doug Nguyen, a Social Security Administration spokesman, told Watchdog.org in July. “So you have the aging of the baby boomers, the overall growth of the working age population and then as the boomers age, they reach their years where they’re more prone to being disabled.”
But with medical advances allowing more people to lead healthy, productive lives than ever before, it is somewhat counter-intuitive to see the roles of disabled workers growing so dramatically.
Some experts say the disability insurance program has become a back door to welfare for some unemployed workers.
The aging of the U.S. population accounts for only 13 percent of the growth in disability payments to men — only 4 percent of the growth in payments to women — according to Mark Duggan and Scott Imberman of the National Bureau for Economic Research.
And the CBO’s projections may turn out to be overly rosy, according to the Social Security Administration’s internal review of the disability program.
On May 31, the Social Security Board of Trustees released its annual report on the long-term financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds, reporting in matter-of-fact fashion that “the DI Trust Fund will become depleted in 2016.”
Some groups, such as the Brookings Institution, have pointed to the sharp increase in disability payments for those with mental ailments such as depression. It’s a trend that dates back to the mid-1980s, when eligibility requirements for the disability program were loosened by Congress.
Meanwhile, there are fewer workers to provide support for those who collect disability.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there were 51 workers for each beneficiary in the disability system in 1968. Today, that ratio is 13-to-1.
Pretty soon everybody will be disabled except a few idiots trying to make it on their own...
Before Obama came into office, SSI and SSDI payments made up about 25% of outlays managed by the SSA (SSDI and SSI are not truly SSA funded programs but administered by SSA).
It is no wonder with the 5 million less citizens employed now than was employed before he took over that some of them would figure out how to scam a disability and get paid really well. After all, all that time at home watching TV wasn’t wasted. They were bombarded with disability lawyers advertising on TV that WILL get SSDI for them. Continued unabated SSDI will bankrupt state UIC funds and they will be part of the biggest drain on our eternal US budget in the form of entitlements.
This is a freight train barreling down the tracks at 200 MPH and it will not stop until there is no more track (i.e., this country is totally, irrevocably depleted of resources.)
It’s all going to end sooner or later. Yeah. It does kind of irk me that I spent 22 years going to some pretty crappy places in service to the country to earn my military pension, while all manner of frauds, cheats, and layabouts get what I get for having done nothing. I guess I was a fool for serving.
Citizenship is overrated and it’s fast becoming true that you are a fool for working for a living or trying to start a business.
Wouldn’t that be “76,000 non-workers,” since they’re “disabled”?
I had an acquaintance who upon separation of svc got himself a “disability” rating because he snored.
He was really proud of having gamed the system so, the L.I.F.E.R. POS.
This is yet another reason to send invaders back to their homelands.
Disability, food stamps, etc. Sounds like Cloward-Piven at work.
Anyone voting for Obama automatically qualifies for disability based on their demonstrated inability to reason and lack of mental acuity.
In many instances disability is closely tied to disabling America. In those cases the “disabled” are willing partners with the America-hating First Clown, nobama. Prison should be their address.
The increase in the numbers of “disabled” and the increase in people working less than 30 hours per week is how the head Oliar and his lying thugs are keeping the number of job seekers down.
Took me nearly 4 years to get it with literally binders full of docs, multiple surgeries and the rest. AKA, legitimately.
I was told by one worher the simple truth. “Wrong color”.
If conservatives were smart we would run a candidate who concentrated solely on the economy and states rights, vowing to avoid trying to legislate morality. Let the states handle the morality; take power away from the feds and return it to the state level where it belongs. Fix the economy before we become a 3rd world country. There’s not much time left, people.
handing it out like candy on Halloween
Growing the Nanny State : /
Well, just think of all the government “jobs” he’s created for the servicing of his needs.
Next, no doubt, will be the hero/heroine of The Left, Bradley Manning, who recently "disclosed" his "gender indentity" issues.
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