Prosecutors in New York have charged 106 people, including 80 retired cops and firefighters, with faking disabilities to obtain more than $20 million in Social Security disability benefits. Prosecutors say the schemes may involve hundreds of people and as much as $400 million in phony claims.
In one infamous photo making the rounds, a former New York police sergeant in his 40s is pictured with a giant marlin he reeled in on a deep-sea fishing trip in Costa Rica. He's been collecting benefits since he claimed that disabilities prevented him from working or even leaving his house.
The amazing cases in New York point to a broader national problem. The number of people collecting from the Social Security disability program has soared by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. The amounts paid out in benefits have risen even faster. All told $137 billion was paid in 2012.
Now here's the scary bottom line: The Social Security disability trust fund is on track to run out of cash in 2016.
Gaming the Social Security disability system has become quite easy. One of the weakest links is a network of administrative law judges who decide whether applicants qualify for benefits. Some of the judges approve practically every case that comes to them. One former judge in West Virginia, who is accused in civil litigation of being in cahoots with a local lawyer and doctors, awarded an estimated $2.5 billion in lifetime benefits over seven years.
Fraud isn't the only reason that the Social Security disability system is in financial trouble. The aging of America's workforce and certain rule changes have played big roles. Jobless workers who no longer receive unemployment checks have turned to the disability program, which generally provides valuable health insurance coverage as well as income.
The program is essential to people who face genuine disabilities, but its future is threatened by fraud and mission creep and indiscriminating administrators.
Some changes are in the works. The Social Security Administration has rewritten the job descriptions for its administrative law judges to rein in a system that pretty much allowed them to rule as they pleased. The SSA also has taken steps to reduce a backlog of cases.
Judicial performance statistics show wide disparities in the awarding of benefits. You can run into Scrooge or Santa Claus, depending on where you are. In the last six months of 2013, judges in Illinois approved 44 percent of their cases, roughly even with the national average of 43 percent. But judges in the Evanston office approved 62 percent while those in Peoria approved 38 percent.
The SSA has pledged to follow up on suspicious patterns. If a judge is approving or rejecting practically every application, or is moving so many applications that it's clear they're not getting enough scrutiny, the judge should be required to justify his record.
That's a start, but a lot more will have to be done to save this system. It can't be exposed to fraud. It can't be a substitute for an unemployment check. It has to be focused on the people who truly need it.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-disability-fraud-edit-0111-20140111,0,495321.story