Open Threads

Gift link:

… The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions…

Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits because of the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent. That would lead to $82 billion less paid out in benefits over 10 years, Smalligan estimated.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security’s disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives.

“The criteria already is really tight enough that we’re actually restricting some people we probably should allow,” Smalligan said in an interview…

People familiar with the proposed changes said they are a priority of Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, who sought during Trump’s first term to update the disability rolls through executive action. At the start of Trump’s second term, the White House budget office urged Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner at the time, to pursue rule changes shortly after he took office.

Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits. Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time…

Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, argued that the rule change is just the first step in broader Republican plans to cut Social Security.

“This is Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history,” Wyden said in a statement to The Post. “Americans with disabilities have worked and paid into Social Security just like everybody else, and they do not deserve the indignity of more bureaucratic water torture to get what they paid for.”…

No ACA plans because premiums are too high, no disability, no food stamps. Oh also we closed all the hospitals.
RIP rurals.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 2:05 PM

===

Guess where Comer, a wealthy man, gets his healthcare? From the government.

[image or embed]

— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 10:19 PM