Posted by Tina
A Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation led by Tom Coburn (R-OK) has uncovered a coordinated fraud ring worth billions in SS Disability benefits :
Eric Christopher Conn, known as “Mr. Social Security,” made $4.5 million in attorney fees from the Social Security Administration (SSA), gaming the system with discredited doctors signing off on medical conditions and working with a judge to expedite the claims process.
Judge David B. Daugherty, an Administrative Law Judge (AJL) assigned to review disability hearings in the Huntington, W.V., SSA office, prioritized Conn’s cases, approving claims at an extremely high rate and holding hearings as short as 15 minutes.
According to the report, Conn provided a list of clients every month to be approved for disability benefits by Judge Daugherty. Daugherty would advise Conn which clients needed medical evidence to qualify, which was then given by doctors who in many cases had lost their license to practice.
“By 2011, Mr. Conn and Judge Daugherty had collaborated on a scheme that enabled the judge to approve, in assembly-line fashion, hundreds of clients for disability benefits using manufactured medical evidence,” the report said.
In comments Coburn faulted the SSA for “inept agency oversight” and emphasized the harm to the disabled and the already stressed trust fund: “This report highlights the very problems Congress needs to focus on but too often ignores. In just two years, the Social Security Disability Trust Fund could be depleted. That means millions of disabled Americans will face benefit cuts while every American could see an increase in their payroll taxes. That is unacceptable.”
The big government bureaucracy is complacent, dysfunctional, and expensive. They are likewise unconcerned about waste in government…at the very least they feel helpless to do anything about it. We are plagued by entitlement or bandit mentality. Earning, saving and investing is almost a foreign concept. People seem more apt to believe that they deserve to take what others have earned. We are numb, oblivious to the declining state of our society and to what it is costing us. Morality is absent from our homes and our schools. We are fed a constant stream of low morality entertainment that we watch incessantly. Is it surprising them that the lawyers, doctors, judges and citizens that participated in this scam represent nothing unusual.
We are not at all shocked or surprised by this scam; it is just one of many. The problem is that people can’t see the cost to themselves personally. But we pay and pay dearly in lost jobs, higher taxes, higher prices on the goods we buy…and government operating in constant crisis.
The committee report hasn’t yet led to indictments so far as I can tell. The lawyer involved in this scam is apparently now working in California…where else?
Corporate rule is fascism I’ll fix the one I have.
Prices? no wages did not keep up.