The Many Facets of Disability

 

Okay, so it's time I do some self-examination. It is time I will be honest with myself. A lot of this blog has been egocentric; I mean that not I am selfish in presenting disability. Instead, I have only focused primarily on those born with physical disabilities, like myself. However, a recent article and a 60 Minutes interview concentrate on broadening the spectrum in which I see things.

 

Several months ago, 60 minutes did a piece questioning where all the new incidents of disability claims had come from. When I saw this piece, part of me took offense to it, but another part agreed with it. There was a comment that many people on social security disability are lazy. However, after reading a recent piece published by the Los Angeles Times, I am forced to reconsider my view.

 

While it may be true that some on disability are there fraudulently, the piece by the LA Times broad to light a new point of view. Perhaps, the claims of disability arising because the overall make-up of the United States population is changing. Whatever the case may be, the disability system will never be perfect, but as the article, which I include below, stresses: it is time to change the system. We need individuals who do their homework on disability. We need to rethink how we approach disability from a financial and societal perspective before the disability fiscal cliff is reached in as early as 2016—just some food for thought.

 

 

 

Explaining the 'mystery' of where all the disabled are coming from

By Michael Hiltzik

 

The apparent explosion in Social Security disability claimants has provided endless fodder for critics of the program in recent years. They're favored the explanation is that the growth in the ranks of the disabled, from 250,000 new claimants a year in 1970 to nearly 900,000 in 2008, comes from fraud or laziness.

 

A new study by two economists at the Social Security Administration should put that to rest. After examining 36 years of demographic data, David Pattison and Hilary Waldron found that population growth, the aging of the baby boom generation, and the increase in the proportion of women in the workforce accounted for 90% of the increase in the disabled population -- and 94% of the rise in the more recent 1990-2008 period.

The rest is accounted for by an increase in the "disability incidence rate," defined only as the factor left after the others are accounted for. But as they point out, the incidence rate has been falling over the last 18 years.

RELATED: 60 Minutes' shameful attack on the disabled

The findings remind that disability is heavily influenced by age and that America's workforce aged rapidly as baby boomers got older. In 1970, some boomers were too young to be working; by 2008, some were beginning to retire. As boomers moved into disability-prone ages (think the late 40s through the mid-60s), the rate of disability in the population would have risen even if none of the other factors was present.

Pattison's and Waldron's work considers the importance today, as the disability program faces a near-term fiscal crisis. The exhaustion of the program's resources, which could strike as early as 2016, demands action by Congress. in the past, the underfunding of Social Security disability has been addressed by shifting money out of the program's old-age trust fund to shore up the disability fund.

Something better and longer-lasting is required this time. Still, that effort isn't helped by the sort of uninformed demonizing of the disability population retailed by people like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). Coburn appeared on "60 Minutes" not long ago to wonder aloud where all the disabled people came from. If he only asked the Social Security Administration, he'd know the answer. But does he want to know? Nor does it help for "60 Minutes," National Public Radio, and other national news organizations to report on disability without doing their homework. With the publication of this latest study, they have one less excuse for getting it wrong.

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-disabled-20131202,0,7260770.story#ixzz2mj1sRMJV