The Real Social Security Disability Fraud(s)

DePaul Journal for Social Justice, Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 93, 2016

Thomas Jefferson School of Law Research Paper No. 2764649

45 Pages Posted: 21 Apr 2016

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

In early 2014, the Manhattan District Attorney announced indictments in one of the largest Social Security Disability (SSD) fraud schemes to have taken place to date. Most of the fraudulent claimants were former New York City (NYC) police officers and fire fighters, many of whom alleged mental disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their involvement in responding to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. However, the claimants' allegations of disability were belied by the lives that they led, often documented by photographs of the claimants boating, skiing, and surfing posted on their Facebook pages. The fraud happened at a time of already great concern over the fiscal solvency of the SSD system. Current estimates have the system becoming insolvent within 3 or 4 years, unlike the more frequently discussed Social Security Retirement and Medicare systems, both of which are projected to remain solvent for at least a couple of more decades into the future.

The day after the indictments were announced, Social Security Administrative Law Judge D. Randall Frye, who is President of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, published an editorial in the New York Times, advocating changes to the SSD system that he claimed would reduce the incidence of fraud and would help the fiscal solvency of the system. Frye’s primary recommendation was to replace SSD's "inquisitorial" hearing system with a full-blown adversary adjudication system.

Taken together, coverage of the NYC fraud scheme, concerns about the fiscal solvency of the SSD system, and Judge Frye's arguments, perpetrate a number of frauds or falsehoods about the SSD system. A major purpose of this article is to rebut three of those frauds: (1) that it is too easy to get SSD benefits; (2) that an adversarial adjudicatory system would improve SSD outcomes; and (3) that the SSD system makes reliable determinations regarding SSD claimants' ability to work. In addition to relying on published data and literature, the article relies on the case of a recent homeless veteran's efforts to obtain SSD benefits to support its arguments.

Though rebutting the first two frauds mentioned above does not call for any major reforms to the current system, rebutting the third fraud does. Thus, this article goes on to recommend scrapping the vocational aspects of the current SSD system, in favor of a new system that would combine vocational training and placement services, and income support, in an effort both to ensure the fiscal solvency of the SSD system, and to provide better assistance to the victims of fundamental economic change and dislocation.

Keywords: social security, disability, adversarial, inquisitorial

JEL Classification: K19

Suggested Citation

Berenson, Steven K., The Real Social Security Disability Fraud(s) (2015). DePaul Journal for Social Justice, Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 93, 2016, Thomas Jefferson School of Law Research Paper No. 2764649, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2764649

Steven K. Berenson (Contact Author)

Thomas Jefferson School of Law ( email )

701 B Street
Suite 110
San Diego, CA 92101
United States
619-961-4205 (Phone)

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