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Monday, October 07, 2013

CBS and Senate panel explore abuse of Social Security disability program, running low on money

UPDATE, Oct. 8: Eric Conn earned $22.7 million in attorney fees from the Social Security Administration since 2001, the U.S. Senate committee said in a report released Monday. In 2005-2011, disability judge David Daugherty approved appeals Conn requested in all of his 3,143 cases. John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, "Daugherty and Conn's law office communicated about upcoming cases, and when Conn's clients randomly were assigned to other judges, Daugherty used his computer to reassign them to himself, Senate investigators wrote in their report. Daugherty sped Conn's cases to approval, sometimes not even holding the required hearing. Colleagues knew what the judge was doing but did not stop him, as evidenced by interviews and internal emails." (Read more)

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/07/2864646/eastern-kentucky-lawyer-earned.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/07/2864646/eastern-kentucky-lawyer-earned.html#storylink"

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/07/2864646/eastern-kentucky-lawyer-earned.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/07/2864646/eastern-kentucky-lawyer-earned.html#storylink=cpy

The Federal Disability Insurance Program was designed to help Americans in need, but has turned into a business for shady lawyers, corrupt judges, and people looking to cash in on unneeded benefits, according to a CBS News report on "60 Minutes." Because so many people receive disability benefits -- the program serves 12 million people, up 20 percent in the last six years, and has a budget of $135 billion -- the Senate Committee on Government Affairs is releasing a report today on the program, which is quickly running out of money.

The program is especially expensive in Appalachian Kentucky and West Virginia, where more than a quarter of a million people, or 10 to 15 percent of the population, are on disability, which is three times the national average, CBS reports. Stanville, Ky., is home to lawyer Eric Conn, who runs the third largest disability practice in the country. Virtually all of his 1,823 cases were approved by former disability judge David Daugherty, who has been investigated by the federal government. Conn's clients have been awarded $500 million in claims, and the report released today "will show that Conn collected more than $13 million in legal fees from the federal government over the past six years and that he paid five doctors roughly $2 million to regularly sign off on bogus medical forms that had been manufactured and filled out ahead of time by Conn's staff," CBS's Steve Kroft reports.

"The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy," Kroft reports. But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), "the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations, who's also a physician, says it's more complicated than that. Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved. Another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable." Coburn told 60 minutes, "Go read the statute. If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That's pretty clear. So, where'd all those disabled people come from? You take a good concept that's well-meaning, and then you don't manage it, you don't monitor it, Congress doesn't oversight it, and pretty soon, you end up with places where, you know, you're born to be on disability."

Coburn says much of the blame falls on lawyers who use commercials and advertisements, such as billboards, to attract the "two-thirds of the people who have already applied for disability and been rejected," CBS reports. "There's not much to lose, really. It doesn't cost you anything unless you win the appeal and the lawyers collect from the federal government." Disability judge Marilyn Zahm told CBS, "If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits." Zahm and fellow attorney Randy Frye, the president and vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, "are each expected to read, hear, and decide up to 700 appeals a year to clear a backlog of nearly a million cases. They say disability lawyers have flooded the system with cases that shouldn't be there," 60 Minutes reports. Zahm said in 1971 less than 20 percent of claimants had lawyers. Now, more than 80 percent do. (Read more)

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