By Steve Levy
Raise your hand if you were surprised that an individual making $100,000 in disability payments was caught participating in a powerlifting contest.
The rise in disability fraud has become one of the greatest scams in this nation’s history. So, why are so many people cheating the system?
Because we let them.
We stubbornly refuse to enact the common-sense solution that would nip this fraud in the bud. All we need to do is simply require that individuals claiming disability report to a centralized location for eight hours a day, five days a week, just as if they were going to work. It could be analogous to the assignment of teachers accused of misconduct to show up during the school day in a study hall-type setting known as the rubber room. Why not have a rubber room for all those claiming disability, except for the severely immobile or disabled? We can even allow the option for the individual to perform light-duty chores that can help the public.
Raymond Phillips, the nabbed weight-lifting ex-police officer, claimed that he couldn’t work because he injured his arm. But, of course, he was able to lift hundreds of pounds in his powerlifting competition.
Even if we assume he legitimately couldn’t utilize his arm to do physical work, what would prevent him from doing other types of white- or pink-collar tasks, including using his other arm for filing or for computer entry?
If Phillips knew that every day he was going to have to report to a centralized location, how long do you think it would take for him to say, “Never mind, I had a better gig showing up for work”?
Phillips will no longer be able to stay home and watch TV for most of the day to do part-time work as an electrician, to do his gardening, or to be a personal trainer, if that’s what tickled his fancy.
This simple solution would save billions of dollars, given that taxpayers are now on the hook for $157 billion paid annually into the disability industrial complex (rising from just $46 billion in 1996).
The disability program started as a safety net program for those who really needed it — those who lost their eyesight or their limbs.
Back in 1996, there were 4.4 million people on the disability rolls. Unfortunately, the system was vastly liberalized, transforming into a secondary welfare program. Eligibility was relaxed to such an extent in the Obama administration that the number of people on Social Security Disability Income and their beneficiaries (widows and children) rocketed to almost nine million at its peak in 2014. During Obama’s term, the federal government, according to a report entitled “Unfit to Work” issued by Chana Joffe-Walt, was spending “more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it [spent] on food stamps and welfare combined.”
Most alarming was the growing trend in which back pain and stress constituted the fastest-growing sectors within the disability claims. Over 47% of all new claims stem from mental disorders (a/k/a stress) or musculoskeletal and connective tissue concerns (back and neck aches). The problem with these categories is that they are so nebulous and especially susceptible to fraud.
How many of us over 40 years old don’t have a great deal of stress or some type of backache? Should we all be on the disability dole?
This racket is exacerbated by the fact that public sector workers on disability often make more money sitting at home playing video games than going back to work. They may, in some cases, receive up to 100% of their income, tax-free. Retirees are often able to collect up to 75% of their income, tax-exempt.
This incentivizing of fraud was captured in an Empire Center report in 2022 which noted that more than half of retired New York City firefighters left on a disability pension.
Investigations in years past exposed scams in which employees hurt playing in a Sunday morning pick-up football game would go into work the next day and come out of the bathroom claiming that they slipped on the wet floor.
We made it so easy to perpetrate fraud in the disability system that, at one time, 98% of all Long Island railroad employees were retiring with a disability package.
We can continue along this unsustainable route for the taxpayers, or we can solve it overnight by requiring the recipient to report to that centralized “rubber room.”
Of course, there’d be some bureaucratic costs in managing the babysitting duties, but the amount we would save by eliminating fraudulent claims would save us billions more.
The bleeding hearts will claim that this is inhumane treatment for people in need. Quite the contrary — the present system is inflicting severe damage on those who are truly disabled since they are getting less money as they have to share the pot with fakers such as Mr. Phillips or the Washington woman who scammed the government by over $1 million in bogus claims.
How much longer are we going to put up with this fleecing of the system?
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of the “On the Right Side Podcast.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com