Rand Paul ‘clarifies’ remarks about disabled

[jjdoyle]

Rand Paul ‘clarifies’ remarks about disabled

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...3/rand-paul-clarifies-remarks-about-disabled/

The other day, Rand Paul stirred controversy when he had this to say about the looming debate over what to do about funding shortfalls in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which is set to become a major flashpoint in the weeks ahead:

“If you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check. Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts — join the club. Who doesn’t get a little anxious for work and their back hurts? Everybody over 40 has a back pain. And I am not saying that there are not legitimately people who are disabled. But the people who are the malingerers are the ones taking the money away from the people who are paraplegic, quadriplegic.”
​

Now Senator Paul’s office has offered a new clarification of what he meant. But it appears to only dig the Senator in deeper.

Glenn Kessler has a great piece today laying out the broader set of facts in this debate. Kessler gives Paul’s comments Three Pinocchios, but also notes that they highlight “an important issue that will have a central role in the political debates this year as the program faces a serious funding crunch.”

 

[Crashland]

Weak response by Rand but there's not much he can do at this point. There are real problems with social security and disability, but that doesn't mean it is okay to go around attacking them with bad arguments and demonstrably false statistics. It only feeds into the narrative that the people pushing for reforms are ignorant at best, or malicious at worst.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

The precise figures are totally irrelevant, half, a third, 27.891%, doesn't matter.

Naturally, however, he media are focusing on that minutiae so they can can ignore the substance of Rand's point (it's too easy to get disability benefits, lots of people on disability are not disabled in any meaningful sense of the word, they are not incapable of working, and this is not so much a problem of "fraud" [violation of the current rules] but of the rules themselves being bad, overly loose).

 

[Crashland]

The precise figures are totally irrelevant, half, a third, 27.891%, doesn't matter.

Naturally, however, he media are focusing on that minutiae so they can can ignore the substance of Rand's point (it's too easy to get disability benefits, lots of people on disability are not disabled in any meaningful sense of the word, they are not incapable of working, and this is not so much a problem of "fraud" [violation of the current rules] but of the rules themselves being bad, overly loose).

Can you point to a few specific rules that are overly loose? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I am curious.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Can you point to a few specific rules that are overly loose? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I am curious.

I can't point you to a specific provision off the top of my head, but the general problem is that the number of medical conditions that make a person eligible for disability has increased over the years, and many of those additions are conditions that cannot be diagnosed. People are on disability for nebulous pains or alleged mental disorders for which there is absolutely no medical evidence - the SSA just takes their word for it. Obviously, that encourages people to fake it.

Take a look at this chart. It seems that the primary cause of disability is losing your job...

 

[Crashland]

I can't point you to a specific provision off the top of my head, but the general problem is that the number of medical conditions that make a person eligible for disability has increased over the years, and many of those additions are conditions that cannot be diagnosed. People are on disability for nebulous pains or alleged mental disorders for which there is absolutely no medical evidence - the SSA just takes their word for it. Obviously, that encourages people to fake it.

Take a look at this chart. It seems that the primary cause of disability is losing your job...

There is definitely a link between disability applications and unemployment. However in the late 1990s at the trough of that graph, over 50% of applications were accepted, but today only 32% of applications are accepted, so the numbers are not as bad as that chart makes it seem as there has been some degree of filtering out the bad applications. Additionally, roughly 20% of the increase can be attributed to the aging of the population. So I think it is important to get specific in order to determine exactly what the scope of the problem is. We all make gut assumptions that it's this huge percentage of people that are gaming the system but I haven't seen a whole lot of specific information to back that up. I hear a lot about individual cases and I know some people personally who are trying to squeeze as much as they can out of disability -- so I know it's a problem. I'm just questioning the scope.