Hopenchange: Mental Illness & Disability Claims Skyrocket As Unemployment Benefits Go Dry
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 20, 2012
Vintage WWII photo: Sign reads, 'Who will help me get a job? I do not want charity.'
As more Americans’ unemployment benefits are exhausted, a new trend has surged. Millions, desperate for financial help, are now filing mental illness disability claims. Such claims, paid for by the Social Security Trust Fund, are costing taxpayers billions more dollars than they were just a few years ago.
The fraud of the Era of Hopenchange is driving people crazy, both figuratively and literally.
From Fox News, Report: Millions of jobless file for disability when unemployment benefits run out:
Being unemployed for too long reportedly is driving people mad and costing taxpayers billions of dollars in mental illness and other disability claims.
The New York Post reported Sunday that as unemployment checks run out, many jobless are trying to gain government benefits by declaring themselves unhealthy.
More than 10.5 million people — about 5.3 percent of the population aged 25 and 64 — received disability checks in January from the federal government, the Post wrote, a 18 percent jump from before the recession.
Among those claiming disability, 43 percent are asking for benefits because of mental illness, the Post wrote. A growing number of those people are older, former white-collar workers.
Disability claims come from the Social Security Trust Fund, which is set to go broke in 2018. Congress last week agreed to dip into the revenue stream to give a 2-percentage point tax break to working Americans.
From Newsroom America, Report: Disability Claims Soar as Jobless Benefits Run Out:
More Americans are filing disability claims as their jobless benefits run out, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, a new report says.
The New York Post reported Sunday that, as their unemployment checks run out, many of the nation’s long-term unemployed are compensating by filing claims of mental illness and other disabilities to obtain Social Security benefits.
“It could be because their health really is getting worse from the stress of being out of work,” Matthew Rutledge, a research economist at Boston College, told the paper. “Or it could just be desperation — people trying to make ends meet when other safety nets just aren’t there.”
The paper said that, according to recent research by JPMorgan Chase, the government was mailing out disability checks to about 10.5 million people, including 2 million to spouses and children of disabled workers, at a cost of about $200 billion annually.
The stagnant economy has grown those ranks. About 5.3 percent of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 are collecting federal disability payments, a jump of 4.5 percent since the recession hit in 2009.
In particular, mental illness claims are surging, said the Post.
Rutlege says when the economy was booming recently, 33 percent of applicants were claiming mental illness, a figure that has jumped 10 percent to 43 percent of applicants nowadays.
On a related note, CNS News reports that per Gallup, unemployment is climbing this month, approaching 9 percent, despite the sleight-of-hand magic trick with numbers that the Team Obama pulled off for December and January.
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