Instead of focusing on the anguish endured by disabled people waiting for a hearing on their applications for benefits, instead of focusing on the homes in foreclosure, marriages ended, and homelessness that results from disability without support, here we go again…another television special on fraud in the disability system.
The recent show on 60 Minutes was flawed as the last one on the topic that aired on NPR.
Michael Boyle, writing for the Philadelphia Public Record, says:
If you watched the show, and were not well informed about how SSD actually works, you would be convinced the majority of SSD recipients are on the rolls due either to fraud or to the machinations of greedy lawyers looking to make a quick buck at the taxpayers’ expense.
Read more at Philadelphia – The Public Record.
In fact, says The Center for Economic and Policy Research,
It looks like CBS News can no longer afford to do their own news reporting so they are picking up material from other sources. There seems no other way to explain the piece it ran last night on the Social Security disability program on Sixty Minutes which is best described as a spin off of an earlier This American Life piece.
The remarkable aspect of this story is that it completely ignored all the comments from experts in the field in response to the This American Life piece pointing out that fraud is in fact not rampant in the disability program (e.g. here and here). There were any number of experts who could have been interviewed on this topic to counterbalance the views of a far-right senator who is best known as a denier of global warming (Tom Coburn). But Sixty Minutes apparently could not be bothered to present a more balanced picture of the disability program.
The basic fact, which may be painful for CBS News and Sixty Minutes, is that it is not easy to get on Social Security disability. Close to three quarters of applicants are turned down initially and even after appeal, 60 percent of applicants are denied benefits.
…
Disability is a large program. That means there will be some fraud. This is not news, except perhaps at CBS.
Read more at The National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives.