CHICAGO TRIBUNE Dec 1989 Social Security Cuts From Reagan Years Being Restored December 04, 1989|By Knight-Ridder Newspapers. WASHINGTON — Almost 200,000 disabled workers cut from Social Security rolls by the Reagan administration have won their benefits back, a new study says, supporting their claims that they were treated unfairly. Those people-suffering from mental illness, cancer, heart disease, strokes and arthritis-were swept from disability rolls by the thousands during a review of more than 1 million cases between 1981 and 1984. Almost two-thirds of those who lost benefits won them back on appeal, according to a General Accounting Office report to be released this week. The GAO reviewed the records of all 315,910 people who lost their benefits between 1981 and 1984 and found that 199,079, or 63 percent, had won them back by June, 1987. The report offers the clearest evidence yet that the review was a massive mistake that harmed thousands of people already burdened by chronic illnesses, say lawyers for the disabled and policy experts. And they say the number of people wrongly denied benefits is higher still. Seven percent-21,176-of those removed from the rolls have died, and an unknown number who probably qualified for benefits simply never appealed. At least eight people committed suicide because their benefits were cut off, said Jackie Parker, a legislative assistant to Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), who wrote legislation overhauling the appeals process. ``It was just a horror story from start to finish . . . and it seemed to be driven entirely by the desire to achieve short-term savings,`` said Paul Light, associate dean of public affairs at the University of Minnesota and a Social Security expert. Bennie Roten, 41, of Jefferson, N.C., used up his life`s savings after he was removed from the disability program in March, 1982. It took him a year to win back his benefits after the government told him he was well enough to work-despite a rare joint disease, a ruptured disk and ulcers. ``For a period of three years I was in the hospital 10 times,`` said Roten, an ordained Baptist minister and former meat cutter. ``As I told them, it`s kind of hard to hold down a job when you can`t get up.`` The Social Security disability system was created in 1956 to provide for workers disabled by illness or injury. In 1988, the program paid $19 billion to about 4 million beneficiaries, according to Phil Gambino, spokesman for the Social Security Administration. The average monthly benefit will be $555 beginning next January. When the cost of the program mushroomed from $3.1 billion to $15.5 billion between 1970 and 1980, policy-makers decided that undeserving people were on the rolls. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed a law allowing Social Security to review cases every three years to see if beneficiaries had recovered from their illnesses. Soon after, a GAO report estimated that 18 percent of beneficiaries could return to work. The Reagan administration used the law and the report to launch a massive review of the rolls. ``At the beginning of the Reagan administration, the philosophy was remove people even if they were deserving, so that not even one undeserving person remained on the rolls,`` Social Security expert Light said. The Social Security Administration seemed oblivious to the pain it was causing deserving beneficiaries, said Bruce Schobel, the agency`s chief policy analyst before he left government in 1986. Reviewers ``would look at the medical evidence as if these people had never been disabled-with no deference paid to the prior conclusion of disability,`` said Paulette Ettachild, a lawyer at Legal Services of Greater Miami. ``They just wanted to get rid of them. They took a legally indefensible route to do what they wanted to do-purge the rolls.`` Beneficiaries won the right to reapply for benefits after federal judges, ruling in class-action cases, found the government acted improperly by denying benefits to people who showed no medical improvement. Also, Congress ordered the government to continue paying disability benefits to people while they appealed
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 04:38:28 +0000
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