The Rise of Disability: What is the Solution?

[_EAllusion]

I see you're wrong about where I live.

I guess we can add Ajax to coal and racism on the list of West Virginia's key exports.

w much do make per year boss? How many people do you have working for you? How about you pay my student loans and spend your Saturdays at work like I have to!

I'm not going to answer specifically how much I make, though it obviously is a lot more comfortable than living off of SSDI. I am in charge of approximately 75 people or several hundred depending on how one interprets our managerial structure. I paid off the last of my student loans this February. I frequently work Saturdays. You again seem bent on implying your 6 figure salary is barely manageable while simultaneously describing living off of disability as akin to a lottery victory that is too good to be true. I would've thought optometry would've involved more math classes.

No disability isn't a life of wealth, but it beats working minimum wage. It shouldn't be that way.

If your opportunities aren't particularly good, then SSDI will become increasingly attractive. $768 a month is appealing when the alternative isn't much better and involves 40 hours of often hard, demeaning work. It is extremely difficult to eek out a comfortable life with either without possessing the sort of creativity and skill set that generally gives you better job options than that. This is a problem. To portray this as some sweepstakes victory is silly. And since you find it hard to keep yourself out of what you consistently act as though is dire financial circumstances while making approximately 10 times more, it's offensive. I guess I missed the publisher's house sweepstakes contest where Ed McMahon showed up on people's doorstop and gave them a lifetime lease on a dilapidated efficiency apartment and a package of Ramen noodles.

[_ajax18]

I guess we can add Ajax to coal and racism on the list of West Virginia's key exports.

How is racism relevant? It's just EAs way of bullying people he disagrees with. You're a real prick EA. How tall are you? You sound like a guy with short man's syndrome.

You again seem bent on implying your 6 figure salary is barely manageable while simultaneously describing living off of disability as akin to a lottery victory that is too good to be true.

I'm not implying anything. You read that personal attack in all by yourself. However much I pay to help people who can't do for themselves should be my decision, not yours.

[_EAllusion]

How is racism relevant? It's just EAs way of bullying people he disagrees with. You're a real prick EA. How tall are you? You sound like a guy with short man's syndrome.

I was making fun of West Virginia, which is sort of known for having problems with racism. You fit the stereotype I was riffing on (a simple search on your name and the word "browns" will turn up plenty of disgusting comments), but that's neither here nor there. I'm ribbing your state, which apparently you have a thin skin for. Why not relax with a Mountain Dew and some Oxycontin?

I'm not implying anything. You read that personal attack in all by yourself. However much I pay to help people who can't do for themselves should be my decision, not yours.

I didn't realize you didn't believe in government social aide at all. I was just replying to your insensitive understanding of what being on disability means and contrasting it with your own comments on how little you think a 6 figure salary is after taxes.

That's great, though. Does that apply to police forces as well? Should it be up to you to determine how much funds you are willing to volunteer for my protection? Are you coming out as an anarchist here?

[_ajax18]

During the campaign there was a lot of talk about people who had just "given up" looking for work and we're not being counted as unemployed? How do you "give up" looking for work? The answer to that seems to be disability. Millions of people have just been moved from state funded welfare to federally funded disability.

I'm sure there are people on disability who are deserving of help. But deserving doesn't make the rest of us any more capable of paying for it. As far as I'm concerned taxes are plenty high and even at the current rate we have a huge national debt. EA doesn't want higher taxes any more than I do. We can't afford to put everyone on disability any more than we can afford to bring in every would be immigrant. Anyone who feels otherwise is free to pony up and pay of their own free will, but that will never happen.

[_moksha]

I remember some years ago there was an argument against establishing a Fountain House clone (a program that helps people with a serious mental illness find work) in Denmark. Some Danes pointed out that they fund disability payments at a much better living level than the US, so that those seriously mentally ill individuals could stay out of the work force. They were saying, not in my office (NIMO).

How messed up is that line of thinking, when Paul Ryan could offer a tasty variety of snack chips from the Soylent Green Conglomerate?

[_ajax18]

I worked with people who were legally blind but when we fit them with the right kind of electronic magnifiers, they were able to get enough usable vision to work. It was arduous factory work and it didn't pay very well. But my hat is still off to those people for finding a way to contribute in spite of their disability.

What this article is talking about is not people with this kind of disability. It's talking about disability as the new de facto welfare program. They're just transferring people from one government program to another.

[_Analytics]

Just to add some perspective to this issue, consider Unum, the nation’s largest provider of private disability income insurance. Unum is famous for having an extremely tight fist when it comes to paying disability claims—their business is to pay claims for people who are legitimately disabled, but they consider it a key competitive advantage to be able to accurately detect when people file or receive claims who aren’t really disabled. Because of this, several hundred people sue Unum every year for denying disability claims, and tens of thousands of more hire attorneys to help them resolve their claims before it results in litigation.

Despite that, it is much easier to get a disability claim approved by Unum than it is by the federal government. First, Unum has a looser definition of what it actually means to be disabled, so a claims adjudicator from Unum can talk about an individual with a claims guy from the government, and will agree that the individual meets Unum’s definition of being disabled but doesn’t meet the government’s definition of being disabled.

More importantly, the federal government is much more skeptical about disability claims that Unum is, and denies a huge percentage of claims, including claims of people who really are disabled. Because of that, a service that Unum offers is that it will pay people’s Social Security disability benefits (plus additional benefits), and will then use their professionals to file claims with the government and get reimbursed for the piece of the claim that the government owed. The professionals at Unum who do this with exhaustive corporate resources and expertise find it difficult to get the government to pay disability benefits.

The story quoted in the OP is misleading—the vast majority of people on Social Security disability income claim are in fact disabled and are not using it as a welfare system. Nevertheless, I’ll add one suggestion regarding question, “What’s the solution?” How about provide all Americans with adequate healthcare? As an example, severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is absolutely disabling and is in fact one of the leading causes of disability. That is unfortunate because the medical community has developed several effective treatments for it—if people on disability for RA and similar autoimmune disorders were given access to the right drugs (e.g. Enbrel), they would no longer be disabled.

[_subgenius]

From the article, this sums it up:

Somewhere around 30 years ago, the economy started changing in some fundamental ways. There are now millions of Americans who do not have the skills or education to make it in this country.

I don't see any fix anytime soon.

This has been the traditional fix, but alas...

[_Analytics]

This has been the traditional fix, but alas...

I don't believe very many disabled Americans qualify for military service.

However, if we didn't engage in so many wars, we wouldn't have as many disabled veterans.

2.9 million Americans receive compensation for service-connected disabilities.

$85 billion goes towards veteran benefits.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that veteran benefits should be cut. I am suggesting that the military needs to be drastically reduced, so that there are fewer veterans and much fewer disabled veterans in the future.

[_EAllusion]

Recommending people who qualify for disabilities benefits join the military, an institution known for rejecting people who have asthma, doesn't seem that astute. That said, ajax just got done saying, "However much I pay to help people who can't do for themselves should be my decision, not yours." It's hard to see why he'd support a US military at all like it currently exists. What is the military if not defending people who cannot do it alone funded with forced seizure of property? Ajax supposedly opposes this, so why would he want to see it propped it up more people taking advantage of his involuntarily seized funds?