Several hundred thousands of disability recipients could potentially be cut off from what is likely to be their lifeline of financial support as the Trump Administration considers removing age as a determining factor when applying for Social Security disability benefits.
When applying to disability benefits, a number of factors such as education, or history, or severity of condition are all taken under consideration before the claim can be approved. Another factor that is also looked at is age. This is likely due to the fact that some jobs view more advanced ages as a limiting factor.
Under current policies, applicants aged 50 and older have their age included as a determining factor when applying for disability benefits. The Trump Administration is now proposing to increase this age to 60. During the first Trump Administration, a similar proposal to bring the age of disability up from 50 to 55 had been drafted. Here is what you need to know.
Impact of removing age as a determining factor
President Donald Trump has often repeated the promise to not cut Social Security benefits for the people of the country. That being said, the Trump Administration is now in the midst of debating the policy of age as a determining factor when applying for disability benefits. If the proposal goes through and age is removed as determining factor, around 750,000 disability recipients will likely be cut off from their benefits, according to the Urban Institute. This would translate to a cut of around 20% to disability beneficiaries, making it the largest cut on record.
“The approach…could result in unprecedented cuts to disability eligibility and benefits—especially for those over age 50,” Jack Smalligan of the Urban Institute noted.
If 20% of disability beneficiaries lose their benefits, it would be “the largest-ever cut to Social Security Disability Insurance,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities asserts. “It would be even larger than the Reagan-era disability cuts, which the Reagan administration was forced to reverse amid fierce opposition from governors, courts, beneficiaries, and advocates.”
As noted above, age is included as a determining factor for disability applications as the ability to adapt to new work decreases with age, as per disability professionals.
”The ability to adapt to new work decreases with age,” Smalligan also explained. “The approach begun in the Trump administration’s first term could result in unprecedented cuts to disability eligibility and benefits — especially for those over age 50.”
What is the SSA saying?
In an email to the LATimes, a spokesperson for the SSA wrote that the agency is “constantly reviewing improvements to the disability adjudication process to ensure our disability program remains current and can be more efficiently administered. … We’re at the initial phase of our regulation agenda and will not have anything further to report anytime soon.”
“Once a proposal is fully developed, it will be shared publicly through the standard rulemaking process with a public comment period. As with any rulemaking, we will consider and analyze public comments before deciding whether to finalize the rule,” the SSA spokesperson added.
What exactly is under consideration?
The current proposal to remove age as a factor for disability applications appears to be an extension of a similar proposal made during the first Trump Administration (but was not implemented). In 2015, Mark Warshawsky wrote a paper asserting the following in justification of the proposal: “A 50-year-old who can perform only sedentary work and is unskilled is presumptively disabled, while a 49-year-old is not. … Given increases in the average human lifespan, the age cutoffs and loose standards for age-related disability are ripe for reform.”
Warshawsky also noted that “the age standard assumes jobs require physical exertion. …. The economy has shifted away from exertional jobs that require direct physical labor and toward more sedentary jobs, owing to computerization and mechanization,” recommending that “age be eliminated as a deciding criterion.”
Recently in a blog post from Tuesday, Warshawsky also wrote the following: “Others fail to recognize the new reality that most people are working past what were once traditional retirement ages, such as 55, 60, 62, and even 65. Defined benefit and retiree health plans in the private sector have largely disappeared, with few exceptions; there is no mandatory retirement; the Social Security normal retirement age is now 67; and healthy lifespans have lengthened considerably across earnings groups.”
At present, nothing has been officially changed, however, the possibility of age being removed as a determining factor for disability applications does appear to be a very real possibility.