One way to help the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) reduce costs and get more beneficiaries back to work is to give employers stronger incentives to take their workers back.
Richard Burkhauser, a Cornell University economist, talked about that idea today at a House Ways and Means Committee Social Security subcommittee hearing on the future of the SSDI program.
Analysts have argued that the SSDI program has been facing serious problems.
Traditionally, SSDI has had a definition of disability that is stricter than the definition used by commercial group long-term disability insurers, but, in practice, the SSDI claim determination process has been unpredictable as well as slow, researchers have found.
Burkhauser, who is associated with the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, testified at the hearing that the Netherlands dealt with high use of the public disability insurance program there by restructuring the program in 2001.
Today, the likelihood that a Dutch worker will be collecting disability benefits is about the same as in the United States, Burkhauser said, according to a written version of his remarks posted on the Ways and Means website.
The Dutch government has reduced the number of people collecting disability benefits without shifting many of the recipients into other government programs, such as welfare programs, Burkhauser said.
The Dutch focused on keeping workers out of the disability program in the first place by making employers more responsible from keeping workers from entering the program in the first place, Burkhauser said.
