According to Social Security’s Disability Insurance program, there are only two kinds of disability: completely disabled or not. But in reality, disability is more complex than that.
The program’s failure to account for this is a disservice to those whom the program is supposed to serve, as it hampers their ability to go back to work.
“There’s a lot of complexity, a lot of concern, and a lot of uncertainty about how to manage as a disabled person getting benefits, being able to work and how to go back to work,” Jason Fichtner, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said at an August conference organized by the McCrery-Pomeroy SSDI Solutions Initiative.
Fichtner proposes to reform the system to be more flexible, with the addition of temporary disability benefits and partial disability benefits. This would be beneficial for those with some, but not full, working abilities. For example, a disabled person might be able to work 20 hours a week instead of none, and then receive some disability benefits instead of none at all. This would not only help the partially disabled to make ends meet, but also keep them more employable when they regain full working capability.
Fichtner also wants to ensure employers are incentivized to employ workers who are partially disabled. He recommends reforms be tested as pilot programs before they are spread nationwide.
“These reforms would recognize that disability is not an all-or-nothing condition,” Fichtner said. Under the current definition, earning more than a certain level of income puts a person’s entire disability benefit at risk — an enormous disincentive to work. The definition allows no leeway for those who can work just a little bit.
Neil Jacobson, the CEO of Abilicorp, proposes a more direct change to Social Security disability insurance: removing all reference to “inability to work” from the definition. Rather, he proposes the definition be “a disability is a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that has resulted in a substantial impediment to employment and is expected to result in death or has lasted or is expected to last for continuous periods of at least 12 months.”
Jacobson, along with others, propose to focus the program on early intervention and self-sufficiency. This would reform the program from simply paying out benefits to helping disabled people work using support services, including career coaches.
For Jacobson, the definition of disability is a personal issue. He suffers from cerebral palsy and addressed the conference through a personal assistant.
Jacobson proposes that beneficiaries could receive their full cash stipend until earnings combined with the stipend exceed 250 percent of the poverty line. After that point, the stipend would be gradually phased out as earnings rise. His team proposes the program be piloted in several states before expanding nationwide. For those who can’t work at all, the program would not change.
“Twenty-five years after the ADA, there’s been no significant employment improvement for people with disabilities,” Jacobson said. “The time for innovative change is now.”
If left unreformed, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund will be depleted by the end of next year. At that point, it will only be able to pay out as much as it takes in, approximately 81 percent of current benefits. “The time for reform is now,” Fichtner said. “We can’t expect to solve this problem overnight.”
Neither Jacobson’s nor Fichtner’s proposals would help fix the finances of the program in the short-term, but finances would likely improve in the long-term if implemented nationwide. Most importantly, they would be a significant improvement in the lives of the disabled.
