Disability -- The New Welfare

[Stinger]

Great article from NPR's Planet Money. Try getting reporting this informative and in-depth from any major news outlet ... or from Fairly Unbalanced Fux, for that matter.

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

NPR Planet Money

And while states have to pay a big chunk of the welfare, they have to pay none of the disability. So this gives them the incentive to do what?

You guessed it. Get people of state-paid welfare and onto federally-funded disability.

There's even a company, PCG (Public Consulting Group), that charges states thousands of dollars for every person it gets off of welfare and onto the federal programs.

PCG is a private company that states pay to comb their welfare rolls and move as many people as possible onto disability. "What we're offering is to work to identify those folks who have the highest likelihood of meeting disability criteria," Pat Coakley, who runs PCG's Social Security Advocacy Management team, told me
...

The PCG agents help the potentially disabled fill out the Social Security disability application over the phone. And by help, I mean the agents actually do the filling out. When the potentially disabled don't have the right medical documentation to prove a disability, the agents at PCG help them get it. They call doctors' offices; they get records faxed. If the right medical records do not exist, PCG sets up doctors' appointments and calls applicants the day before to remind them of those appointments.

PCG also works very, very hard to make the people who work at the Social Security happy. Whenever the company wins a new contract, Coakley will personally introduce himself at the local Social Security Administration office, and see how he can make things as easy as possible for the administrators there.

...

There's a reason PCG goes to all this trouble. The company gets paid by the state every time it moves someone off of welfare and onto disability. In recent contract negotiations with Missouri, PCG asked for $2,300 per person. For Missouri, that's a deal -- every time someone goes on disability, it means Missouri no longer has to send them cash payments every month. For the nation as a whole, it means one more person added to the disability rolls.

Interesting read. Pisses me off.

[Leo Lyons]

Great article from NPR's Planet Money. Try getting reporting this informative and in-depth from any major news outlet ... or from Fairly Unbalanced Fux, for that matter.

And while states have to pay a big chunk of the welfare, they have to pay none of the disability.
So this gives them the incentive to do what?

You guessed it. Get people of state-paid welfare and onto federally-funded disability.

There's even a company, PCG (Public Consulting Group), that charges states thousands of dollars for every person it gets off of welfare and onto the federal programs. Interesting read. Pisses me off.

That being said:

I haven't verified the figures, because I was just too lazy and Stinger would accuse me of going back hundreds of threads and posts. But anyway, I'm certain if the figures are incorrect, that now off by much.


Read this:

1.
$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.

2.
$22 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

3.
$2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

4.
$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!

5.
$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

6.
$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

7.
30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

8.
$90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & Social Services by the American taxpayers.

9.
$200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal Aliens.

10.
In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin. .

11.
The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants in the United States .

The total cost is an approximate whopping... 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!!

It isn't only citizens shafting the government, they're shafting themselves....and us.