Senator Rand Paul Clarifies Statements Insinuating Half of the People Receiving Social Security Disa
" 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." These were the recent words of Senator Rand Paul. You can go to the link below to see how he and his staff backpedal some including how they mischaracterized statistics from the Social Security Administration.
There is fraud in almost every government program. It does not matter whether it’s a social service program like Social Security Disability, a business subsidy program such as with farmers, or defense spending by the Pentagon. The real question is how prevalent it is and to what degree does the perception of that prevalence affect the goals and mission of the program. I don’t think Social Security is any more prone to fraud than any other government program relative to size, budget, and the number of recipients or beneficiaries. In fact if you could measure such a thing, I would take a guess that fraud was actually less prevalent. I don’t think most people realize all the safeguards there are to protect the integrity of the system and protect it from fraud.
People often tell me that they know or have known such and such and they get or got social security disability but they definitely can work for a living. First, I politely tell them that social security disability is much much harder to get than most people realize. Then I ask if they live or have ever lived with the person. Then I ask if they have seen all that person’s medical files. There are a little confused at first but then they get my point.
