Just days after a Senate committee reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) was often wrongly awarding disability benefits, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) called on the SSA to modernize its thinking on disabilities and how they actually affect a person's ability to work.
In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Social Security, a GAO official stated that when making disability benefit award decisions, the SSA too often fails to fully consider modern factors such as assistive devices and workplace accommodations that can help disabled persons function.
"Specifically, we noted that SSA's disability programs emphasize medical conditions in assessing work incapacity without adequate consideration of the work opportunities afforded by advances in medicine, technology, and job demands," GAO's director of Director Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues Daniel Bertoni told lawmakers.
In other cases, noted Bertoni, the medical criteria and physical activity job requirements information used by SSA in making disability benefit decisions is outdated.
"In contrast," he stated, "modern concepts of disability take into account the interaction of health conditions and contextual factors -- such as products, technology, attitudes, and services -- on an individual's functional capacity, rather than viewing disability solely as a medical or biological issue."
In addition, Mr. Bertoni cited disability experts' suggestions that before awarding disability benefits, SSA should more fully consider applicants' ability to perform work despite their impairments, and their ability to work if provided appropriate support by their employer.
"Officials we spoke with from an organization of vocational examiners expressed frustration with having seen young individuals who could work with minor accommodations being provided disability benefits likely throughout their working life, rather than receiving support to pursue work," Bertoni told the subcommittee. "Representatives of the organization added that minor accommodations can include a stool for sitting or devices to assist with vision impairments."
During 2011 alone, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, both administered by the SSA, paid out more than $178 billion in payments to about 14.5 million people with disabilities and their families.
The independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that at the current rate of benefit payments -- which exceeds program revenue -- the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund from which disability benefit payments are made will become insolvent during fiscal year 2018.
Also See:
Social Security's Bleak Future
Are You Eligible for Federal Government Benefits?
Comments
Your suggestions are for accomdations for physical impairments. What suggestions do you have to accomodate for mental illness? Employers won’t touch them so there will always be a need for SSDI and SSI.
Accommodations in the workplace is just one factor that goes into whether a person is capable of performing any kind of work on a sustained basis. If a Judge finds that a person can adequately perform a job with reasonable accommodations in the workplace setting, they likely will not be granted benefits. Your article, like many others, infers that all young people on disability benefits do not deserve the benefits they receive. What about the Administration’s ability to review cases after 12 months, or 24 months, after a finding of disability has been made? SSA hardly takes advantage of this and this could encourage young people to get back into the workplace. You should also know that accommodations can affect what’s known as the “ordinary work setting,” which is what Judges must consider when determining if an accommodation is reasonable and realistic. If the accommodation creates an extraordinary work setting, then according the rules and regulations set forth by SSA, it cannot be a reason why an individual can work in that particular job.
@all — These are not my suggestions, nor does the article imply anything. It is not an editorial. The article merely recounts the findings of the GAO report. The only opinions stated are those of Mr. Bertoni of the GAO.
Thanks!
Robert Longley
Social Security for people who are depressed should be reviewed at least every two years unless they are so depressed they are institutionalized. Getting a check to sit at home in the dark watching TV is more of a cause of depression than a solution. And, obviously, you don’t have to joyfully whistle while you work to keep a job.
But there have to be jobs.
I think the person who had the nerve to refer to depression issues as “getting a check to sit in the dark and watch TV’, is an IDIOT. Have you suffered from depression or any other mental illness? Do you have any idea how hard it is to live with this illness? YOU should be flogged for such an ignorant opinion. I have SUFFERED for decades, in and out of hospitals, tons of medications, even attempted suicide to get out of a world so horrible due to depression. I did not ask for this illness, as far as I know and have read and studied, I did nothing to make myself DEPRESSED. I do not SIT in the dark you arrogant jerk watching TV. I hope you have to live this way some day. You are an awful person.
@Jane…you must be part of the 47% that Willard Robme ponificates about while sitting a top his golden throne. Go get a job! Stop taking from the producers! Nothing about helping a fellow American.
I hope you are able to find a way to deal with your depression. Go easy on the anger on people like “mindbird.” They are simply part of the vast swath of uninformed people with plenty of opinions and very few facts.
I am not calling people with depression freeloaders. People with depression have generally disengaged from others socially. By pawning them off with a tiny monthly check and some pills, it is as if they were being cut loose to sit home and suffer, just throwaway people whose talents and skills and values mean nothing, who are just in the way.
Instead they need medication and professional support and many different services geared to getting them up and into ordinary life—which all costs a lot more money up front.
Freud defined health as the ability to love and to work. Of course there are cases of intractable depression that render people unable to work ever, but that is not true for most. Even in the midst of depression, a few moments at work being pulled out of yourself and forced to think about someone or something else can be a great relief, and the beginning step toward health.
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