I'm not being confrontational (I hope), but I'm curious as to what sort of real waste there is on Disability that could be cut without harming those who need it to survive.
We deal with Disability; I am listed as "partially permanent" under Disability from a severe Workman's Comp injury with no real access to the system because I can still "work in a meaningful manner" at a desk job that I'm also qualified for.
I could not get SSDI when I became injured and I still cannot get SSDI at this point of time unless I totally broke down and spent years unable to function - until I became fully, permanently disabled.
Laz is on SSDI, because he is physically incapable of working for more than a few weeks off and on a year. He might be able to make up to maybe $1200 a year - if he were physically functional enough to make it farther than walking down the hallway at home without having to sit down, and be able to sit for more than an hour without having to lay down, and if his hands stopped shaking enough for him to type for more than ten minutes every two hours or so.
I haven't seen where there's a lot of extraneous federal employees, office overhead, or managers. Other than the occasional health status reviews, the payments, and the end of the year paperwork, he has very little interaction with them.
It's like pulling teeth to get on Disability (a significant amount of people will die before or soon after they get approved) so one would think that if there was a lot of private companies skimming profits off Disability, it would be significantly easier to get on. Disability lawyers are retained by the applicants and paid out of the claims, and the reviewing doctors are paid a flat fee.
Medical services are paid out of Medicare, as far as I can tell - and that would be where the majority of the fraud and waste would be.
So, what sort of waste? Fraud? Maybe .5% of those on Disability might be participating in Fraud. I'm counting the elderly and children (or those born completely disabled), not just people of working age who became seriously sick or injured. A lot of the problem with the appearance of fraud in Disability is that most of the General Public sees the average person on disability to be of working age, and everyone in that age group are assumed to be "able bodied/able minded", therefore gaming the system, if they aren't in a wheelchair, missing parts, or somehow paralyzed or otherwise brain damaged.
Household means monitoring? As in, one can't apply for Disability unless one is living alone or one's spouse/parents/house-mates are making under a certain threshold?
That's extremely cruel to those who are disabled as well as difficult to manage. Some disabled people can swing between good days and bad days, but are on disability because they can't maintain enough functionality to do any sort of regular meaningful work throughout their lives. Means monitoring pretty much ensures the majority of those who are not functional enough to work or don't have families that make enough to care for them will be homeless - if there isn't some sort of warehousing policy - a poor/alms house or workhouse system - also set up like there was back in the days before Disability.
It would pretty much ensure requiring a significant increase in social workers to regularly track or monitor each person on disability to make absolute surety that the person's physical/mental disability status and their financial is maintained. Once dropped from Disability, would a disabled person who might have had a year or two of reasonable functionality where they might have been able to hold down a job be able to return to disabled status once their bodies or minds give out again.
Cutting Advertising or Administration?
Disability advertises as much as the VA does, and both institutions suffer from insufficient administration. Yes, there is bureaucracy, but much of that comes from not having enough people to do the work that needs to be done, and those at the top not having the proper resources or (in some cases) training and awareness of best practices to deal with managing a non-profit service provider. SSDI/Disability is the left-handed stepchild of Social Security. It will actually cost more money up front to make the Federal Disability system modern, flexible, and more efficient than the government is willing to provide. It might be easy enough to say "cut the waste at the top", but what Disability needs is a shake-up at the top rather than cutting; there are still not enough of the right internal infrastructure - technicians, caseworkers or reviewers - to be able to oversee the program properly.
Just my comments on this.
Haele
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