There are always claims that people commit Disability fraud, although statistics have shown it’s not as prevalent as skeptics believe. Several years ago, one state launched an expensive investigation, with the end result that only half a dozen people in the entire state were disqualified. Disability benefits being the pittance they are, the state’s savings on their benefits will not even come close to offsetting the cost of the investigation.
The "massive fraud" that the government expected simply didn’t exist, and part of the reason is that it is impossible to make ends meet on Disability benefits – I’d be getting near the top of the range, yet even my SSDI benefits would amount to less than a full-time minimum-wage paycheck. And the media do regular assessments that minimum wage is not enough to live on, so obviously, SSDI benefits amounting to less than minimum wage are not enough to live on – especially when you also need to pay medical and pharmacy bills that the average minimum wage earner doesn’t have.
One of the things that you need to look at is whether there’s an ulterior motive. I know someone who claimed she was disabled and quit her job during the divorce, at the precise point where she could get lifetime alimony if she claimed to be permanently disabled; a few months later, she wouldn’t have been able to re-open the case to get alimony (and, oddly enough, after the divorce was final, mutual friends never again saw any sign of disability or heard anything about the symptoms that she’d claimed were "so bad that she could never work again"). Conversely, although one of my doctors made snide remarks about divorcees wanting alimony, the facts show that I was working full-time at the point that alimony was determined, and therefore signed away all my rights to ever ask for alimony – even permanent disability would not allow me to request alimony from that husband after I signed that waiver. Don’t confuse him with facts, his mind was already made up; that the law didn’t allow what the doctor assumed to be my goal was immaterial.
A Disability applicant who has a spouse with a good-paying job is more likely to have an ulterior motive than an applicant who is self-supporting. My SSDI benefits will not be enough to pay the bills, and there’s no one else’s salary to make up the difference. Add up your basic bills and decide what you would jettison if you had to get by on a total income of $1000 or less per month. (And if you’re currently getting health insurance through your employer, remember to add into your budget a couple hundred a month to continue that policy, because you won’t get government health care until you have been on SSDI for two years.)
There’s no "secondary gain" for those of us who live alone: no one does the chores, no one pays our bills, no one coddles you so you can stay in bed all day. If I want someone to do my chores, I have to pay them ... and how many minimum-wage earners do you know who can afford to hire a housecleaner and a gardener every week?
Sure, a life of not having to go to work sounds good to most people. But when you look at the financial realities, a life on SSDI is not as enjoyable as you think. One of my friends gets $645 a month. She’s constantly having to beg and borrow to get by. Her TV died a few years ago and she can’t afford to replace it. Her car conked out and sat in the driveway for months till a male friend offered to fix it in exchange for a home-cooked meal; she’s not sure what she’s going to do when the car gives up the ghost for good. My late best friend got about $300 a month from Disability: Mama paid her rent, Mama bought her car; Mama paid her pharmacy bill. If Mama hadn’t gotten a nice inheritance to be able to afford all those extra expenses, my friend would’ve been living in the streets. Financially, either of them would be much better off with a minimum wage job, except that neither of them is physically able to get to work every single day as required to remain employed.
Too many people judge Disability applicants without looking at the facts. Are there people out there who have spent a lifetime avoiding work? Absolutely. But if someone (like me) has a reputation as a "hard worker" who usually had 2 jobs, or a job and a home business, then the word "lazy" doesn’t apply. I’ve been told that State VocRehab would not be able to place me in a job due to my doctor-documented restrictions and limitations, and multiple SSDI VocRehab experts have said I’m unemployable. If no one else was going to hire me, I hired myself, because I can’t not work. It’s not in my nature to sit around doing nothing.
The real question is, what does the Disability applicant actually do all day? If the person is able to do hard physical labor (say, gardening) for hours every day, or goes to the mall for hours every day, or attends multiple exercise/dance classes each day, then perhaps they aren’t really disabled and should be reported for investigation. But if the person only goes out for a couple hours once or twice a week, and spends most of their time resting, then the fact that they can occasionally spend a few minutes gardening, or an hour going to the grocery, doesn’t mean they’re not disabled – there’s no requirement that you have to spend 100% of your time lying down in a darkened room, only that you are not able to "sustain employment", i.e., you don’t have it in you to work five 8-hour days every week. Even someone who spends many hours a day lying in bed reading books is not necessarily "employable", if they’re confined to bed and cannot get to an office or sit at a desk, VocRehab will say they’re not employable and won’t help them look for a job (though if you come to VocRehab with a valid work-at-home possibility, they may be persuaded to buy you the necessary equipment). Even if you can get to a workplace, you need to be able to meet productivity goals – if your healthy colleagues are able to make 100 widgets per day, you won’t be employed for long if you can only do 30.
Anyone who doubts my claim that I spend most of my time resting rather than doing things is welcome to stay with me for a couple of weeks to confirm that what I say is true. I’m sure that there’s been surveillance placed on me over the years, and that the surveillance has confirmed that I pop out the front door for a moment in the morning to bring in the newspaper and a moment in the afternoon to bring in the mail, and other than that, most days I don’t leave the house.
The issue isn’t whether I can do a little something a few hours a week, but whether I can work enough hours to keep a "real job", and the answer to that is No, as proven by every time I’ve tried to go out several days in a row, or tried increasing the number of hours I work in a week.
Most people who apply for Disability benefits would rather be working. Don’t fault them because employers won’t hire them; with a very few exceptions (like drug abusers or daredevils), we didn’t bring our disabilities upon ourselves. I’m disabled because someone I don’t know gave me their virus bug; the only way I could have prevented it would have been to lock myself in my apartment for the duration of flu season to make sure no one shared their germs with me. A lot of people are injured in accidents that were simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time
A healthy diet and regular exercise will help keep you well, but they are not a surefire guarantee that you will never become disabled.
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