Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

NPR report on Social Security Disability makes waves

The rolls have been expanding steadily for years, at tremendous cost, and the new NPR report, by Chana Joffe-Walt, is just plain devastating:

A person on welfare costs a state money. That same resident on disability doesn’t cost the state a cent, because the federal government covers the entire bill for people on disability. So states can save money by shifting people from welfare to disability. And the Public Consulting Group is glad to help.

PCG is a private company that states pay to comb their welfare rolls and move as many people as possible onto disability.

More: Jagadeesh Gokhale, Cato Regulation mag (PDF)(program “facing insolvency in just three years”); Ronald Bailey, Reason; Reihan Salam; Wynton Hall, Breitbart.com (furious counterattack from some on Left). And Heather Mac Donald, with notable prescience, saw the problem coming more than 17 years ago.

P.S.: A disability lawyer’s response.

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6 Comments

  • This is hardly new. When I worked for a state welfare system in the early ’70’s it had a dedicated team in every office working on converting (100% state funded) general assistance recipients to disability cases so they would be picked up by the new (100% federally funded) SSI system when it went into effect. The only difference seems to be that those workers were state employees, not private contractors.

  • When a left leaning media outlet like NPR is driven to muckraking, you know this issue on “faux” disability has reached epidemic proportions.

    • By mjs

  • […] reform is largely a myth. Many people who used to be on welfare have since gone onto Social Security Disability. That benefits states by shifting their welfare costs to the federal […]

  • […] reform is largely dead. Many people who used to be on welfare have since gone onto Social Security Disability. That benefits states by shifting their welfare costs to the federal […]

  • […] things, pay no attention to that report on the growth of the disability program [NADR.org, earlier] Ronald Reagan got rolled on the SSDI disability program, and we’re all paying the price […]

  • […] Lee Habeeb, NRO. Earlier on growth of federal Social Security Disability payments here and here. […]