CBS News: Disability, USA

Steve Kroft reports on the alarming state of the federal disability program, which has exploded in size and could run out of money

When it began back in the 1950s, the federal disability insurance program was envisioned as a small program to assist people who were unable to work because of illness or injury.

Today it serves nearly 12 million people - up 20 percent in the last six years - and has a budget of $135 billion. That's more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined. It could be the first government benefits program to run out of cash. It's been called a "secret welfare system" with its own "disability industrial complex," and a system ravaged by waste and fraud. A lot of people want to know what's going on. Especially Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma who we talked to last fall, when this story first aired.

A lot of Conn's success, they say, had to do with a particularly friendly disability judge, David Daugherty, who sought out Conn's cases and approved virtually all 1,823 of them, awarding a half a billion dollars worth of lifetime benefits to Conn's clients. The decisions were based on the recommendations of a loyal group of doctors who often examined Conn's clients right in his law offices and always endorsed them for the disability rolls.

Steve Kroft: Were most of the medical reports submitted by the same doctors?

Jennifer Griffith: Yes.

Sarah Carver: Yes. Sometimes up to 13 to 20 reports a day.

Jennifer Griffith: I know on one, we counted 16 exams by the same doctor all in one day at his office.

Steve Kroft: And they were all approved?

Jennifer Griffith: They were all approved.

Steve Kroft: Were all those valid claims?

Sarah Carver: There's no way that you're going to have 100 percent of clients walk through your door and be disabled. 100 percent of claimants, there's no way......" 

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Disability, USA