NY Times: Insurers Faulted as Overloading Social Security

[marmar]

Insurers Faulted as Overloading Social Security
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Published: April 1, 2008


The Social Security system is choking on paperwork and spending millions of dollars a year screening dubious applications for disability benefits, according to lawsuits filed by whistle-blowers.

Insurance companies are the source of the problem, the lawsuits say. The insurers are forcing many people who file disability claims with them to also apply to Social Security — even people who clearly do not qualify for the government program.

The Social Security Administration defines “disabled” much more stringently than the insurers generally do, so it rejects most of the applications, at least initially. Often, the insurers then tell their claimants to appeal, the lawsuits say, raising the cost.

The insurers say that requiring a Social Security assessment is a standard practice and that there is nothing wrong with it.

The policies they sell allow them to coordinate their benefit payments with others to make sure no one is paid twice. Thus, if a disabled person can get benefits from somewhere else — like workers’ compensation, a disability pension or Social Security — the insurance company can reduce the benefit check by that amount.

The flood of referrals, however, is making it hard for Social Security to respond to people who are truly disabled, said Kenneth D. Nibali, the former top administrator of the Social Security disability program.

“Anybody who is forced to come into this system, and who doesn’t need to be there, is affecting someone else,” said Mr. Nibali, who retired in 2002 and is serving as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. “They’re holding up cases for the people who have been waiting for months and years, who in many cases are much worse off.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/01disabled.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[mrcheerful]

1. Just another way repukes use to waste SS dollars and make it harder to

continue. Remember Insurance companies not only support pukes, they also write most of the medical legislation now a days.

[Hidden Stillness]

2. Typical Republican "Kill the Government" Effort

This, yet again, is a typical Republican stunt to kill a department or program, right up there with appointing someone totally incompetant or criminal to run it, or passing a mandate on something and then not allocating any funds for it. This is how they have decimated the budget for the Dept. of Education, by inventing this phiny "No Child Left Behind" thing, which yet again no "Democrat" had the courage to oppose and fight (Ted Kennedy was for it!), and which is nothing but absolutely worthless test-taking and test-giving, and mountains of worthless paperwork--wasting completely the budget for the whole department. Anti-Government Republicans don't even try to abolish Departments they don't like, anymore, the way that bastard Reagan did; they just invent extreme amounts of paperwork, to destroy their whole budgets.

Putting all the burden on the Government, and letting the corporate entity off the hook, as a Republican standard practice, also reminds me of their treatment of two (at least two) other situations: the way they categorized all damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast as "water damage," making the Federal agency FEMA pay for it, even when it was obvious and some people stayed behind and were witnesses, that it was wind damage, and therefore covered under their commercial homeowners' insurance policy; and the situation when that prick John Snow, later a part of the Cheney/Bush Administration, maneuvered all the costs of a criminally negligent disrepair of the railroad tracks, as an executive of a rail corporatation, and after a court battle, putting the repair expense onto AMTRAK, the Government entity, which had no actual responsibility.

Shift all costs of commercial profit-making onto the Government, cut all taxes paid TO the Government and replace with tax-shift to the non-rich or with commercial fees, and kill all hated Government agencies with endless, needless paperwork, all while shifting all tax dollars from public good to corporate welfare--that is the "self-reliant, pioneering" Republican way.