House probe cries foul on Social Security disability claims

Social Security is approving disability benefits at strikingly high rates for people whose claims were rejected by field offices or state agencies, according to House investigators. Compounding the situation, the agency often fails to do required follow-up reviews months or years later to make sure people are still disabled.

Claims for benefits have increased by 25 percent since 2007, pushing the fund that supports the disability program to the brink of insolvency, which could mean reduced benefits. Social Security officials say the primary driver of the increase is demographic, mainly a surge in baby boomers who are more prone to disability as they age but are not quite old enough to qualify for retirement benefits.

The disability program has been swamped by benefit claims since the recession hit a few years ago. Last year, 3.2 million people applied for Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income.

In addition, however, management problems "lead to misspending" and add to the financial ills of the program, investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee say.

"Federal disability claims are often paid to individuals who are not legally entitled to receive them," three senior Republicans on the House committee declared in a March 11 letter to the agency. Among the signers was the committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa of California.

Social Security acknowledges a backlog of 1.3 million overdue follow-up reviews to make sure people still qualify for benefits. But agency officials blame budget cuts for the backlog, saying Congress has denied the funds needed to clear it.

Social Security spokesman Mark Hinkle said the agency follows the strict legal definition of disability when awarding benefits. In order to qualify, a person is supposed to have a disability that prevents him from working and is expected to last at least a year or result in death.

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The Program for Disability Benefits for Those Federal Workers Reported as Waste

The program for the disability benefits for those federal workers is said to be wasteful and abused. This is because it was said that a lot of healthy federal workers are feeding off of the benefits when they have no need too. A lot of them are leading healthy, happy lives and doing things – such as running marathons that you wouldn’t do if you had an actual disability. They are traveling the world, scuba diving, skiing in the snow, and buying boats while collecting over $100,000 annually in disability payments. A lot of the workers make more on disability payments then if they were to actually work at their jobs. A lot of people are also using the disability payments as retirement payments instead. Most of the recipients are 66 or older,, six of them are over 100 years of age which is well past the age of retirement.

A lot of times states have stronger anti fraud protections, but the federal’s laws are just hoping that the employees are telling the truth when it comes down to collecting these payments. Workers comp seem to be just the thing to go on for retirement or if you’re laid off and no one seems to check anything out due to the fact that it is through the federal. A lot of people are saying the a reform is needed in order to crack down on what is being changed through the system.

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Teen with Autism Changes Disability into Talent

Today’s youth has many different challenges that they are faced with everyday. They are all thinking about college and what to do when they grow up and how to pass classes, but some students find that other challenges might be harder to go through. One 17 year old boy, Grant Manier has autism, and this makes it difficult for him to communicate and socialize with his peers. He did however, find a way to overcome this obstacle by becoming an Eco-Impressionist.
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VA Clearing All Old Disability Cases

The push that the department went through in order to eliminate the oldest of old cases from the backlog they have experienced has paid off finally. 97 percent of the backlogged cases have been processed over the past two months. A lot of these cases have sat for two years. Around 65,000 cases were eliminated from the backlog which is rather impressive. They gave priority to some of the oldest claims that were sitting there in order to give these veterans a chance to start collecting on their disability funds if they are eligible. They told those that were new to submitting that due to the new push for the older claims, the average wait time was now close to 300 days.
(Read more here)

Deaf-blind Ottawa woman angry after ‘humiliating’ Air Canada flight | CTV News

Deaf-blind Ottawa woman angry after ‘humiliating’ Air Canada flight | CTV NewsAn Ottawa-area woman who is both blind and deaf has launched a formal complaint against Air Canada after a difficult trip to Alberta last week that she says left her frightened and humiliated.

Christine 'Coco' Roschaert is a 33-year-old motivational speaker who has travelled the world to advocate for the rights of the deaf-blind community. She was born deaf and lost most of her sight in her late teens through a condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

Roschaert has taken more than 1,000 flights to 50 countries around the world for her speaking engagements. Those trips have included dozens of solo flights aboard Air Canada, in which she brought along only her white cane to guide her.

But the Air Canada flight she took last Friday from Ottawa to Edmonton traumatized her, she says.

Roschaert says she got through security and boarded her flight without a problem. But before takeoff, a manager with Air Canada walked up to her and told her she had to get off the plane.

“I thought I was being arrested for something, or that I was in trouble,” Roschaert told CTV Ottawa, speaking through her sign-language interpreter. (click the link above for the full story)

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