Blind people have always had a privileged situation in relation to these
benefits. I wonder if this might change.
Miriam
Trump Administration Quietly Goes After Disability Benefits
By Arthur Delaney, Yahoo! News
08 January 20
Some Americans could lose Social Security Disability Insurance benefits
under a recent Trump administration proposal ― a change that could affect
thousands of people but that has received little attention since it was
first floated in November.
Under the proposed change, the government would look more closely at whether
certain disability insurance recipients still qualify as "disabled" after
they've already been awarded those benefits. While recipients already have
to demonstrate their continuing disability every few years, the proposal
would ramp up the examinations, potentially running still-eligible
beneficiaries out of the program.
The extra reviews will help "maintain appropriate stewardship of the
disability program," the administration said in the proposal, arguing
current rules fail to account fully for the possibility of medical
improvement.
It's just one of several unilateral moves the Trump administration has made
against social programs that make it easier for people to survive without
labor market income. The proposals may save the government a few dollars,
but they also send a political message that President Trump is cracking down
on the "takers" Republicans have vilified for decades.
Democrats and disability advocates said the proposed new regulation would
only hurt disabled people, that it hasn't been vetted and that the
rule-making process should be delayed. More than 8 million Americans receive
disability benefits based on past employment and a loss of wage income due
to the onset of a severe disability.
"We are concerned that under the proposed rule, some individuals subject to
review will be simply unable to navigate the process and, as a result, lose
their benefits even though there is no medical improvement," a group of
House and Senate Democrats led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a
December letter.
The administration, for its part, is making only a halfhearted argument that
ramping up medical reviews to kick people off disability benefits is
actually going to help them. "We believe that there may be positive
employment effects as a result of these proposed rules, although we cannot
currently quantify them," the Social Security Administration said in its
notice of proposed rule-making.
"If they haven't improved enough to go back to self-supporting work then
they probably should still be eligible for benefits," Kathleen Romig, a
senior policy analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
said in an interview.
The regulation could affect hundreds of thousands of SSDI and Supplemental
Security Income recipients, Romig said, potentially ending benefits for tens
of thousands. The administration didn't estimate how many would lose
benefits, but said the proposal would save $2 billion over a decade.
The rule would not take effect until sometime after the administration
releases a final version, for which no date has been set ― and as with other
regulations the administration has issued without input from Congress, a
lawsuit could stop it.
Social Security disability benefits are not easy to get, and most
applications are denied. Once an application is approved, the government
conducts "continuing disability reviews" every so often to make sure the
beneficiary still can't work. How often the reviews occur depends on whether
the applicant's chance of medical improvement gets classified as expected,
possible, or not expected.
The draft rule would add a new category: medical improvement likely, as in
likelier than possible, but not as likely as expected. Reviews would occur
"approximately every two years," as opposed to within 18 months for people
with expected medical improvement and within 3 years for those with possible
improvement. Overall, according to the administration, there would be 2.6
million more reviews, an 18% increase, at an anticipated cost of $1.8
billion ― almost wiping out the $2 billion worth of savings on benefits.
For the new category, the regulation specifically targets older disabled
workers who didn't win benefits strictly because of their disabilities, but
also because they were lower-skilled and unlikely to be able to succeed in
some new occupation.
Conservatives have complained about the so-called "medical-vocational grid"
that the Social Security Administration uses to award benefits to people
whose impairments are less severe but who nonetheless have virtually no
place in the labor market.
Mark Warshawsky, a Trump-appointed Social Security commissioner for
retirement and disability policy, argued in a 2015 paper he co-authored that
"the grid's guidelines make it easier to award SSDI benefits to middle-aged
and older workers, unskilled workers, and non-English-speakers, and should
be eliminated and replaced with a simpler, fairer, and more uniform system
for determining eligibility."
In a formal comment letter this week, the National Organization of Social
Security Claimants' Representatives cited research showing that most people
whose benefits are terminated do not go on to earn much money in the ensuing
five years because they are too disabled. The letter also noted that the
administration itself admitted it could not quantify any beneficial
employment effects.
"The proposed rule relies on mere guesses or wishes to justify a change that
evidence shows to be harmful," NOSSCR director Barbara Silverstone wrote.
"This is not just arbitrary and capricious, but callous and malicious."
The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House declined to comment.
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