Sorry folks there is disability fraud

[daredtowork]

88. No, you need to educate yourself: there is a TON OF OVERSIGHT

There is way too much oversight of SSI/SSDI. That's why it takes 3 years to get. That's why it's on the patient to collect a ton of documentation, and you almost always need a lawyer to get it. That's why Social Security auto-rejects the majority of the first 2 claims and forces people to go through the appeals process. That's why both the patient's doctors and social security doctors are involved in this process. That's why there are regular reviews, even for people in wheel chairs and with terminal diseases.

Very little of this is actually necessary for "eliminating" fraud. A lot of the fraud is screened out just by the process of medical qualifications and reviews. The process of investigating the major fraudsters (the doctors and lawyers) is handled by the police and the FBI: the people who benefited from their frauds can be traced from those cases.

So all this hand-waving does is just add BUREAUCRATIC FAT onto the process. This means red-tape for the people applying: they have to wait longer, and they have to give up part of their benefits to the lawyers they inevitably have to hire. This means more cost to the taxpayer in supporting the bureaucracy. A more expensive bureaucracy means a greater threat to the program, because politicians will look askance at how much it costs to run - even though very little of that money is making it's way to the disabled people who need it! The money is actually going to pay the bureaucrats!

What would extend the life of the program is educating people about it raising confidence about how it works!

Also, if people are grumbling that SSI is being used as "stealth welfare", then maybe we ought to fix welfare!!!