NEWSPAPER SAYS SSA WILL GUT ITS DISABILITY PROGRAM SOON

1/11/2020      The Wal Street Journal says today that Social Security is about to gut its disability program.  (They use the nicer word, "eviscerate").

It will do so by cutting the guts out of the Grid Rules, the charts that helped over 500,000 Americans qualify for benefits in 2019.

Social Security has shown its desire to clamp down on disability benefits for nearly a decade, starting in 2010.

In 2010, most claimants got denied, just as they do today.  But by appealing and attending a hearing before a judge, 62 percent eventually won their benefits.  By 2018, that was down to 42 percent.

There has reportedly been a lot of pressure from SSA for their judges to trim benefits on their own, and most of them have done so. 

And every time Social Security comes up with a new rule to "improve the integrity of our program," watch out:  they have just made getting benefits harder and slower (again).

Now, the new commissioner, Andrew Saul, wants to disembowel Social Security. No more cutting with a sharp knife; he intends to take a wrecking ball to it.

Saul's thinking, according to the Wal Street Journal, is based on changing demographics.  People today are better educated and live longer.  They don't work blue collar jobs in mines or factories--but they work in banks, stores, hospitals and offices.  In short, they just don't need disability benefits the way they once did. Besides that, we can't afford it.

That's not the truth, of course. But it's the myth based on partial truth and changing social crusades, which don't include the disabled so much.

The new, eviscerated program will probably roll out within two years (maybe sooner).  Individuals with the most catastrophic impairments will still be covered; however, the type of things they pay benefits for today won't be approved.

Sure, if an individual has both arms and both legs amputated, that will still be covered.  But the more common impairments that are being paid for today--they will be long gone.  So, forget about a claim based on herniated discs, radiculopathy, neuropathy or the inability to stand or walk. The good old days of easy money are gone, according to Mr. Saul.

Medicare will be gone, too, for most people.  When SSDI goes away, so does Medicare coverage.  Without one, you can't get the other.

If the Wall Street Journal has it right (and they say they've seen the goods),hard times are ahead for America's disabled--especially those above 50.  Without the grid rules, the denial rates will triple.

I expect you won't hear much of this one the news, now or then.  It will be done very quietly, without announcement or fanfare.  Suffering is nearly always done quietly.