Senate Panel Uncovers Millions in Disability Fraud

By Dr. Mercola

The Federal Disability Insurance Program was started in the 1950s to assist people who were unable to work due to injury or disability. Today, the program has a $135-billion budget and serves close to 12 million people, but its funds are in danger of running out.

With a 20 percent increase in the last six years alone, the Federal Disability program now spends more in an average year than the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined, according to a 60 Minutes segment by CBS News.¹

For those who need it, the Disability Program is invaluable, but the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations believes the program is being abused – by lawyers, doctors and even some recipients – putting the benefits for those who truly need them at serious risk.

Disability: A System Ravaged by Waste and Fraud?

If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen commercials for disability lawyers advertising their services, hoping to earn a dollar and a cent by appealing cases from the two-thirds of people who applied for disability and got rejected. Last year alone, the Social Security Administration paid $1 billion to claimants’ lawyers.²

Certainly, some of these lawyers are providing an honest service, but others clearly appear to be exploiting the system. CBS News used the example of one attorney who runs the third largest disability practice in the US.

The Senate investigation revealed that he had collected more than $13 million in legal fees from the government over six years, while paying five doctors about $2 million to “sign off on bogus medical forms that had been manufactured and filled out ahead of time by… [his] staff.”³

According to the Senate investigation, up to 25 percent of disability files should not have been approved:⁴

“The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy. But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations -- who's also a physician -- says it's more complicated than that.

Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved -- another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.”

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