The government tends to take a tough stance leaning toward the “any occ” standard when it comes to disability. My personal experience with the government is that they do have a high standard that maybe it should be lessened some. So I am sympathetic to those comments that suggest people get rejected but suffer from real disabling ailments.
Those that get disability, often depend on it to pay their bills and so denying claims should be based on real hard facts. I retired at 48 due to a heart condition and have always been plagued by sports related arthritis. I was blessed with a career that while short allowed me to accumulate enough assets to retire, others are not so lucky. So I understand disability even though I never collected any benefits because of it.
But I think it is important to see the other side of an issue. Early in my career I audited life insurance companies that sold disability insurance. One of the areas, I audited was the “contested” disability claims. As an auditor, you want to make sure that a company is contesting claims for “good cause” and not for financial reasons since an insurance company’s reputation is only as good as their adherence to the insurance contract obligations they take on. In the process, I was exposed to the massive fraud that takes place in the area of disability claims. Now if it happens to private health insurance companies, why would anyone think it does not happen to the government. But fraud does not cost the government money, it costs the taxpayers money.
I believe, it is very difficult for honest people to comprehend the dishonest behaviors of their fellow man (or woman). If not for that portion of my career spent in insurance, I would likely be one of them. Now let me preface by saying I believe most people are honest, but that still leaves those that are not (and disability income and workers’ comp have always attracted a higher number than average of dishonest people, but even here the majority are honest).
In the past, countermeasures entailed hiring expensive private detectives to follow suspected abusers. As a result, a company had to have a pretty high expectation that the person was abusing the system before incurring the cost. But insurance companies don’t operate to lose money and so all the lower level fraud and abuse they missed ended up in the premiums charged to honest people. So do honest people deserve to pay for dishonest ones or should companies do what they can to ferret out the dishonest claims?
How is the government different? Should taxpayers pay more because the government fails to catch abuse? Payroll taxes are over 16% of payroll and they are not enough to cover the government’s claims. So eventually, the government will have to cut benefits to everyone, raise taxes to everyone, or reduce fraud. Which option do you prefer?
If like me, you prefer the government reducing fraud before raising taxes or cutting benefits, then we have to accept doing so will entail trying to cost effectively determine who is committing the fraud. As an aside, I bet private insurance carriers are also monitoring the social networks of those that claim disability in order to reduce costs.
Once people accept money from the government, the government is obligated to insure the money is being spent for the purposes it was intended. And so it must monitor for fraud. The writer fairly asks the question whether monitoring social networks will help to detect fraud. I can answer that question for him, yes. But it won’t be definitive and it won’t catch everything. But the real question is whether it will be cost effective.
The Social Security Administration doesn’t have the resources to read everything that everyone on disability posts. I suspect they are using technology to scan the posts. But so what, Facebook does that. We give Facebook permission when we accept the service, we give the government permission when we cash its checks.
I do not believe the government will deny someone disability based on a social media post, but it could trigger an inquiry requiring the person to demonstrate that they still have the disability. People tend to forget that they are suppose to tell the government if there has been any improvement in their disability.
That entails the individual’s physician confirming the disability and based on the physician’s letter, it would be reviewed by a nurse working for the government. If the government and the individual do not agree with the government’s decision, there is an appeals process. I guess I believe given we have a $1 trillion dollar deficit, that cost effective means to reduce fraud are a good idea and not a bad one.
I government officials abuse the technology, then those people should be fired. People forget the government is spending our money, we want government to spend it wisely.
