Adult baby is a symptom of a broken Social Security system

Great post By Matthew McKillip of AEI

Perhaps Stanley Thornton will be the giant straw that causes a policy breakthrough in our failing disability system. Thornton, as The Atlantic reported, is a 350 pound “adult baby” who receives disability benefits. Earlier this week it was decided that he was not fraudulently on the Social Security rolls.

Senator Tom Coburn asked for an investigation into Thornton’s case on the seemingly sound logic that anyone who can “custom-make baby furniture to support a 350-pound adult” should not receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) disability benefits.

While Thornton’s unique case is sure to stir outrage, of greater consequence is the SSDI system that he is drawing benefits from. The SSDI is both a fiscal and functional disaster: it is on pace for insolvency in 2017 and it discourages workers from returning to work through an ill-conceived incentive system. Austerity measures that aim to trim “adult babies” and others who can work off the disability rolls is at best a short-term fix. President Reagan attempted it in the early eighties but, as AEI Adjunct Scholar Richard Burkhauser explains, his efforts “were extremely controversial and resulted in a backlash that ended up making both SSDI eligibility criteria less strict and removing someone already on the rolls nearly impossible.” Cuts alone will only delay the reality that policy, not fraud or health conditions, is the root cause of the disability system’s failure.

Burkhauser, author of The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities, told McClatchy:

This is not a disability crisis in the sense that suddenly our workers are becoming less healthy. This is a fundamental flaw in the system that leads us to increasingly use SSDI as a long-term unemployment program for people who could be in the workforce if they had the appropriate (workplace) accommodations and rehabilitation.

The way forward is a serious conversation about what should be happening at the onset of a worker’s disability. Currently, there is little to nothing in the system that signals the costs to both workers and employers—both are inclined to increase the SSDI rolls on the federal dollar. Drawing on the experience of the Dutch, who have managed to stabilize a disability system which at one point had ballooned to 12 percent of their workforce, we should consider reforms such as making firms responsible for employees’ first year of sick pay or experience rating SSDI taxes. Experience rating allows those employers who do an above average job of getting workers back to work pay fewer taxes, while those who are poor at it pay more. Both of these adjustments provide an incentive for a company to accommodate workers, get them back on their feet, and help them lead a happier and more productive life.