I had occasion a few years ago to sit with a circuit judge from KY whose
specialty was labor cases. Most of her business dealt with "disability"
claims. The stories she related about the culture of "disability" in
KY, especially in the eastern part, were frightening, at least to anyone
who might have an interest in how their tax money is spent (and that is
now only half of the *working* population now). Or I guess it should,
some won't see any problems there...
The main thing was that most of the people she ran into in her work were
quite capable of working, no real physical issues that would impede
that. Their life strategy was to get a job either in the gummint
(easiest to bail from) or the coal mines or a factory or something --
these people were not highly, or even lowly, educated, but they had
figured out the system -- then after a couple of years to have some
"disabling" accident or injury or something so they could then claim
disability. There were plenty of docs (I could give you a description
of most of these, but let's just say in underserved areas your average
doc is not a graduate of a US medical school) who had figured out their
angle and could get paid well by the state or fed or whomever to certify
them (not paid related to the disability, but just for the exams and the
drugs and such) as "disabled." Of course, lots of drugs (oxycontin
preferred) was a part of this treatment as well, which provided another
source of income for both the doc and the patient,whose severe pain
required considerable dosing.
After being "disabled" they then conduct their oxy bidness, go hunting
and fishing and whatever, make a few $$ here and there...
In short, she was appalled at the depth and breadth of the scams, but
could not address much other than the cases she saw. She was not a
sympathetic judge, or willing to bend to expediency.
My wife remarked on this topic the other night. She said she gets lots
of (cancer) patients whose first thing in her exam/consult is to whip
out the disability papers to get her to sign. She refuses as most folks
at the point she sees them are still able to work (or not, whatever) as
the illness is not at the point where they are "disabled." And by the
time they get to that point, they don't usually have the time to deal
with the process so it becomes rather moot.
--R
On 4/10/13 1:32 PM, Curt Raymond wrote:
I heard the same story. You're leaving out the part where many of the people
have literally no other job skills and even if they did there are no jobs for
them anywhere nearby...
Still, its crazy that the government doesn't at all challenge the cases. Apparently one of the guys
from "Axe Men" got caught a couple years ago because he was out on disability and now
"logging".
-Curt
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:07:48 -0400
From: Dan Penoff <d...@penoff.com>
To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT - Rant question of the day
Message-ID: <8ef8cc6c-4c7d-4999-afe3-9b9e38f98...@penoff.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Some interesting stories on Planet Money last week about welfare and
disability, and how the number of people on SSI has ballooned over the past
10-15 years. Why? Because the SSA doesn't really challenge applicants,
especially those who hire legal representation to make their claim. This has
made some law firms literally billions of dollars at our expense.
Add to this that the states like to move people from welfare to disability,
because SSI is a Federal program while welfare is partially funded by the state.
Dan
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