A new report suggests that the government create incentives for employers to keep disabled workers on their payroll. The reasoning being that this would slow the increases in the number of people who receive Social Security Disability benefits. This unsustainable expense is decreasing the amount of money in the Social Security coffers and could potentially affect the future of Social Security.
The proposal is that workers and employers share the cost of a private Disability Insurance package which would cost between $150 and $250 per year. Workers who seek federal disability would have to first be approved for benefits from the policy held by them and their employer. The benefits would cover rehabilitation services, partial income support and some other services. Once the worker had received private payments for two years, they would then be eligible to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits as long as their disability is found to be too severe for them to continue working.
Enrollment increases in the SSDI program have risen sharply with the economic slump in America during the past few years. The reasoning behind this increase is not because there are more disabilities occurring. The increase happened when high unemployment rates have shown employers to have less tolerance for their employees who struggle with disabilities because they know more capable workers are searching for jobs at that time.
In the past proposals have been submitted to address the problems with Social Security have not attempted to do any changing of the SSDI sector. At this time the rapid growth of the SSDI policies and the money spent is creating difficulties in all areas of the Social Security program.
