In the twelve-month stretch from October 2022 through September 2023, 30,000 people died while waiting for federal disability determinations, according to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. Martha asked Harris what she would do as president for people, like herself, who are waiting for disability decisions while in desperate need of health insurance.
Delays in those decisions, driven in part by understaffing and a Covid-related rise in disability rates, have driven the typical wait time from four months in 2019 to seven months today, often coupled with the need to appeal an initial rejection, which can take years. The processing times represent a mounting crisis for the more than 1 million Americans who apply for disability in a given year.
So a bit more info on this … if you look up the average of the demographic that tries to game a system it usually sits somewhere between 2-5%. Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that even tho 95-98% of people follow the rules, everyone has to be vetted (and often denied) so the ‘bad’ ones can be filtered out.
Untold b/trillions are spent doing this, far surpassing what it would cost to just have basic vetting where people in need would be able to access funds/services within 30 days.
Edit to add – This is ONLY good for individuals. All corporate entities should be held to a minimum wait of 6 months to be completely vetted.
Reminds me of… I want to say Florida requiring drug tests for welfare. They probably spent orders of magnitude more than they saved.
That’s because our government, from top to bottom, has a punishment-based attitude when it comes to any and all violations of any rules or laws. And instead of precision strikes, they use flamethrowers.
Problem is the rules aren’t enforced on everyone. Just us peons face the full extent of them.
This usually bears out in large workplaces too, most of the employee mistakes are genuine, about 5% are deliberately done by psychopaths. I mean real mistakes like HIPAA violations, not clocking in late from lunch.
Yup. Afaik those numbers run across the board, although I have seen an insanely low number for one Ontario social program a few years back (like 0.68% found to be scamming).
I’d be interested in seeing that study or report. I wonder if they identified likely factors.
Sorry, I can’t even remember what kind of program it was for. My ADHD just picked up on the number and logged it into my brain without a reference point.
Gimme a bit and I’ll see if I can find it.
Thank you!
Found one for Employment Insurance in Canada … works out to less than 1% for 2017-18.
Public accounts documents released this month list more than 104,000 incidents of fraudulent EI claims totalling almost $177 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year.
EI spending between April 2017 and March 2018 topped $19.7 billion. The value of fraudulent claims amounted to less than one per cent of total spending.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/employment-insurance-ei-fraud-1.4876688
Thats a pretty good figure, I’ll have to remember that for when its relevant.
Is there a good way to estimate how many cases of fraud don’t get caught?
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I managed to get on SSDI after fucking years, before Covid, and guess what, I still can’t afford anything beyond roach motel / slum lord housing (which of course have bad water and mold and dust, and because these places don’t have a 3x rent as income requirement)…
…, and I can’t actually access medical care, as I can’t afford a car and public transit is basically non existent, and even if I could, it would take me a year of referrals and tens of thousands of dollars to access the PT care I need.
Its literally 100x easier and less expensive for me to just learn the PT I need to do from reading studies and watching youtube videos from actually qualified people.
If you get on SSDI, if you make more than about 1500 dollars a month, for 9 consecutive months, then your SSDI benefits go away, poof, all gone, until you have 0 income for another 9 months.
During which time you will be evicted and likely die on the streets as a disabled homeless person.
I am medically qualified for disability but instead I have a job and work just enough hours to pay rent because that’s easier than jumping through all the hoops to get disability
Same. It’s insane some of these limits and stupid amounts of outdated red tape.
I probably should be as well, but I just don’t have the fight left in me anymore.
Maybe someone can explain to me why it’s easier to fight for someone else vs ourselves, 'cause it’s gd annoying as hell.
It will always blow my mind that the <$950 people on SSI get every month is somehow supposed to sustain them. I’m lucky that I get SSDI but even though I’m making 1.5x the SSI benefit, I’m still drowning in expenses. And I can’t do any work or I risk losing my income. I wish they’d just let me work a couple hours a month with zero risk to being kicked off disability. It would save so much money in their other benefit pots that I do qualify for.
But yay, so glad they’re using realistic math to determine an appropriate cost of living adjustment. That 2.5% will go a long way - I could afford the gas to drive to the doctor 2 extra times! Or I could buy 4 bananas! The possibilities are endless.
- cries in Ontario *
Yup. There is little difference in Canada (except for universal healthcare, which is decimated across the board rn).
