I’m just curious if there’s any way to measure the number of people who are abusing entitlement programs like welfare, medicaid, etc.? Have the numbers changed over time?
[I ask because it dawned on me yesterday that the most common statement I hear against these sorts of programs is the fact that there are people like “welfare queens,” who have tons of children to get the welfare checks, but if these people make up a small percentage of the number of people on the program, then the argument is not really relevant]
Is a welfare queen abusing the system? Technically, anyone who is not completely crippled (or whatever the PC term is) is abusing welfare. The question is whether they do it mecenary - “I’m going to live off the avails of working folk” or whether they have deeper problems and simply can’t be bothered to hold a job?
I’ve run across a lot of people with anger management issues, punctuality and attendance issues, diligence, and other control or intelligence issues. A large number of these have trouble accepting responsibility - they got fired because the boss was a bitch, not because they couldn’t do what they were told… I suppose if they knew they would end up on the street with NOTHING, some would smarten up - but some wouldn’t. Until you encounter the bottom of the pool, you have no idea how scummy it can be. The world is full of full-time losers.
So, we as a society (except maybe the teabaggers) have accepted that we do not allow even the bottom of the gene pool to starve and freeze in the dark. Are our programs too generous or lenient? Maybe.
If the question is how many commit outright fraud - work and don’t report it - I suspect that those who can and do are not as many as we think. I suppose it depends how likely you think it is that people can find decent-paying undocumented jobs. That seems much easier in the USA than here in Canada. I suspect the opportunistic times when they can do minor fraud - come into a bit of money and not report it - are common but not significant.
I know the Canadian unemployment insurance system used to be rife with fraud; they typical one was to have multiple Social Insurance Numbers, so you could work on one while collecting on the other. The place I worked at started getting letters “This person will use *THIS *SIN” as the computer systems began identifying and weeding out these duplicate numbers in the late 80’s.
When I worked in public housing, a big concern was identifying women who had welfare income but a live-in boyfriend. Good question - is this truly a committed relationship, or easy sex with minimal strings attached? How many sleepovers should deprive a person of their welfare? And if the system makes it easier to get money if you two pretend or act like you are spearated, then who’s the fool for not taking it?
Do people have a ton of children to live off welfare? I doubt it. I suspect a lot of younger girls get the first child in part because it gets them into an apartment - but even that is not a given, with the shortage of public housing. I suspect it’s more a matter of despair and default - if your school days are coming to an end and there’s no prospect except minimum wage and living with your mother, a place of your own and a child to love sounds like a good deal.
So my bet (and your money) is more on lazy and unmotivated than mercenary or criminal.
I heard some shocking numbers the other day about medicare/medicaid fraud. False claims etc. From personal experience it seems to be pretty easy to get Social Security Disablity if you just file for it and appeal enough times (seems to be a government scam to get you to hire a lawyer to finally win the case). I know of no person that has not been able to get SSDI if they just stick with it long enough and hire a lawyer.
From CATO Institute:
SSDI was established as a source of income for persons who are so severely disabled that they cannot perform any meaningful work that exists in the national economy. The program, which allocates funds directly from Social Security general revenues, was never intended to be as broad and expensive as it is today. Yet current SSDI payments account for 14 percent of all Social Security distributions.
And I DO CONSIDER BEING TOO LAZY TO WORK, fraudulant use of the system.
Of course this is all anecdotal but of the many people I know of that collect that check every month I only know of 2 people that actually deserve it. And both of them also work. One is a paraplegic and the other was born deformed (severly deformed as in no legs and arms about as long as the average persons elbows with little finger like nubs on the end). He’s quite an amazing fella. He will not park in the handicapped parking, often takes the stairs (he has manmade legs), has better hand writing then most people I know, is a whiz on a computer (started out doing tech support and has moved up a lot since then) and basically doesn’t even acknowledge his own handicap. From what I recall he makes too much money to qualify any longer for the benefit but I do believe there is some sort of check he still receives. I could be wrong.
Of the many people I know that collect SSDI and in my opinion don’t really deserve it because there is work they could do, all of them are women. Surely, there are also many men that fall in that category too. I just don’t know them. I’m sure with the many problems I have, I could also qualify for it if I really wanted to. I just happen to be against social welfare programs (at the very least as far as it is administered in this country) and as long as I can work I intend to do that. Besides I personally can’t live on the 1100 or 1200 a month that my social security statement says I would qualify for.
Just did a quick google and came up with this: http://www.insurancefraud.org/medicarefraud.htm
“Medicare and Medicaid made an estimated $23.7 billion in improper payments in 2007. These included $10.8 billion for Medicare and $12.9 billion for Medicaid. Medicare’s fee-for-service reduced its error rate from 4.4 percent to 3.9 percent. (U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2008)
Medicare and Medicaid lose an estimated $60 billion or more annually to fraud, including $2.5 billion in South Florida. (Miami Herald, August 11, 2008)”
And while I realize many on this board will discount PolitiFact, see this anyway:
I don’t think the amount fraud costs the United States is any small number not worth being considered. And that’s just fraud against entitlement programs.
For most purposes, Welfare as we think of it is dead. wiki"After reforms, which President Bill Clinton said would “end welfare as we know it,”[14] amounts from the federal government were given out in a flat rate per state based on population.[17] The new program is called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).[16] It also encourages states to require some sort of employment search in exchange for providing funds to individuals and imposes a five-year time limit on cash assistance.[14][16][18] The bill restricts welfare from most legal immigrants and increased financial assistance for child care.[18] The federal government also maintains an emergency $2 billion TANF fund to assist states that may have rising unemployment.[16]"
There’s Food Stamps, but the amount is very small.
Do you also want to include, for instance, people abusing worker’s comp disability, medical providers defrauding medicaid, farm corporations abusing agricultural subsidies, and people being ridiculously overpaid for government contracts because they’ve rigged the procurement system (cough Boeing cough)?
Because in terms of total tax dollars, I’m pretty sure what’s most important here.
As a Canadian, with universal health care, I’m not sure that Medicare/Medicaid fraud really qualifies for this discussion. People need the health care they need, and if they don’t have the resources to pay for what they need, then no surprise if they game the system or lie to get help. Nobody says “I think I’ll get a gall bladder operation I don’t need because it’s free…”
(The exception being those very few who are hypochondriac or more likely, many who are seeking medication to feed a drug problem…)
My interpretation of the OP was how much do people get disposable cash they are not (should not be?) entitled to through government programs?
For what it’s worth, I’d be somewhat surprised if Social Security disability benefits were a major source of abuse. It is very difficult to establish one’s eligibility for benefits - you need to prove not only that you can’t return to your old job, but that you are physically and mentally incapable of doing any job that exists in nontrivial numbers in the US. If you used to be a college professor, and now are only capable of flipping burgers - that’s regrettable, but you’re supposed to go do that. That’s a high standard, and you can only satisfy it by presenting pretty solid medical evidence - normally, treatment notes along with an exam by a doctor working for the state government or Feds. People routinely get weeded out in their initial application, and often go through three levels of appeal within the state/federal administrative framework before they either give up or sue. It is not easy to get these benefits.
I will give Newt Gingrich a BJ if the number of people who’ve done that can’t fit in my parlor. Here in Liberal Blueland, the most someone can get from welfare is about $100 extra per child. Maximum [food stamps](Massresources.org &subpages=yes&dynamicID=310) is about $150 extra per child. If you google “cost of child” you’ll find a kid runs about $10,000 a year. A truly evil person could probably cut that some by feeding the little one gruel and dressing him in rags, but not enough to both break even and keep the child alive. Someone who could figure out how to make money by having welfare babies is a financial genius who’d be worth millions to any corporation with a single brain cell in the whole building–and I think desk work is much, much easier than minding kids.
Let’s see. The link also says the budget for Medicare was $465 billion. It doesn’t say what the budget for Medicaid was, but this document(warning pdf) puts the combined state and federal totals for Medicaid at $204 billion, for a combined total of $669 billion.
So if you accept the OMB figures of $23.7 billion, that’s about 3.5% of the total.
If you accept the Miami Herald (and where did they get their figure?), it’s a little under 9%.
And if you accept PolitiFact’s figure of 20%, that works out to $133 billion.
That’s a hell of a difference between the three figures, which leads me to wonder if ANYONE has more than a wild-assed guess.
Many people get fired because of poor performance, but their employer wishes them well all the same, and reports them as “laid off,” so that they can collect unemployment checks. Is this an abuse?
Or what about people in the film industry? Their work is by nature contractual–project by project–and so technically they can collect unemployment between movies. Many do. It’s difficult for anyone to determine that they’ve “refused” any offers during this time between movies, especially since so much of the work starts out by word of mouth. Is this abuse?
This is begging the question, obviously, by nature of the term itself, which was devised for political and rhetorical reasons. The complications and complexities of raising children under unstable, impoverished conditions (not to mention the future consequences arising from children who are raised in these conditions) belie the usefulness of such terms. I agree with md2000 that this is something which reflects our social value systems more than a balance ledger.
I know a couple of people on disability benefits and wish to second this. It is very difficult to get on the rolls. Almost everyone is turned down on their first application unless their disability is so horrible that they are for practical purposes a living vegetable.
Please note also that there are invisible disabilities that are none the less real. One person I know, for example, has a medical condition that flares up a couple times a week. Sometimes she may be pain-free and mobile for several days at a time. On a good day you’d wonder why she’s freeloading with her food stamps and disability check. On a bad day you would not wonder; you would not even see her, as she’s probably confined to bed and barely able to care for herself. Yet she has all of her senses, limbs and intelligence. Why not a part-time job? Very few paying jobs will tolerate someone who may or may not show up on time or at all on an unpredictable schedule.
92% of everyone is either working, seeking a job, retired, a minor, attending university, or a stay-at-home parent. Adding in people who are mentally ill or physically impaired and can’t work, I suspect that you could get to 95% at least.
Yes. Canada is very comparable to the USA (about as close as it gets). When the unemployment rate was down to the 5%-6% range here, there were frequent economic analysts in the media saying that this was about as low as it could go, once you eliminate people unable to work, people between jobs, medium-term sicknesses, etc. Also, 6% means that in some rural, economically disadvantaged areas it’s much higher, but in the boom areas it’s in the 3% to 4% range, meaning it was impossible to find people to hire.
I remember being in Orlando several years ago and EVERYONE had “Now Hiring” signs in the window - same idea.
Fraud is most likely when there’s ready hard cash to be had and the authorities couldn’t be bothered to look for cheaters. I doubt that applies to most programs. Medical fraud, I suspect, is more likely perpetrated by the providers overbilling or fictional billing than by people looking to get double the doctor care they need.
If you watch the movie “Precious”, the grandmother is caring for the Downs Syndrome great-grandchild, but brings her over when the social worker shows up to make it look like the mother and daughter qualify for the extra child-care money. Is that fraud? Yes and no, I doubt the grandmother is also collecting welfare for the same child; that would be too easy to catch. If the child is only being paid for by the system once, it’s basically the grandmother subsidizing her child and grandchild. So this sort of crap requires a compliant dupe to do child care without pay (because of family loyalty). I seriously doubt there are too many of these.
I know this is obviously antidotal, and not statistically significant, but every person I have ever known who was on a taxpayer-funded entitlement program was abusing the system.
The problem is that you’re assuming those on welfare are “doing the math.” They’re not. All they know is that they get an increase in payments. That’s enough for them to have another kid.
If welfare paid $20/ extra per kid per month, many of those on welfare would have a kid. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make economic sense.
This is completely anecdotal and is completely wrong. I deal with people on public assistance every day. It’s really easy to say “these people are lazy or dumb” or “these people are cheaters”. I’m betting you grew up in a nice middle class family, had the opportunity to go to college, etc. etc. The Horatio Alger “just apply yourself and work hard” thing works better in theory than practice. Some people on TANF are probably lazy, some are probably stupid, just like in every other group. But it’s mistaken to say it’s endemic to the indigent community or that these people have some moral failing. They are as much a product of our society as Michael Jordan or Bill Gates – blaming them for “failing” is logically incoherent and biased.
I have never seen any “welfare queens” (which are pretty much a made up talking point for Rush Limbaugh). I have some clients with lots of kids, many by different dads. There’s no calculation of benefits, which wouldn’t work anyway, given how the system works. It’s more a socioeconomic phenomenon than any intent or laziness or whatever judgmental word you want to use.
As far as SSI and SSDI go, every single participant has had a doctor sign off on them being unable to work. Some disabilities are less obvious than being a quadriplegic. Mental illness can certainly qualify you, as well as things like back problems where you can’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time.
Sure, a lot of these people actually could work, at some job, somewhere. But that is a simplistic analysis that overlooks the difficulty of getting a job due to discrimination, valid or not, the lack of proper training for that desk job, the other expenses incurred due to the disability, etc. etc. The job market is already tough, and without a diversity-increasing disability* getting hired is next to impossible.
I realize my experience is also anecdotal, but I’m reasonably sure I have a lot more anecdotes, and they are a randomish selection, and I’ve seen the documentation for most of these people, not just made a guess about how disabled I think they are.
*These are the ones that everyone can see that don’t affect job performance much but makes everyone else feel better about being supportive, except that most of these positions are professional ones, not your average SSDI participant.
The Cato institute, whatever you might believe about its political leanings or conclusions, is pretty respected for providing accurate data. If you’d like to provide competing cites, with an explanation of why those are better than the CI’s research (other than you agree with them), feel free, as we are, after all, in GQ.
