Disability fraud involves faking information to obtain benefits that are not entitled to a person (Tunley 304). Sometimes, people may feign a medical problem to be declared physically challenged while others may exaggerate an existing medical problem that does not render them disabled for them to continue receiving the payments, especially after they have convalesced from the medical problem that they had. The number of people with disability has escalated, despite the fact that work has become less physical (Tunley 305). In fact, this is one of the difficult frauds to detect because most of the physically challenged people receiving do not use the wheelchairs and any of them might be using them when they do not qualify. According to statistics, fourteen million people get monthly checks from the federal government (Tunley 313). In this context, those who practice fraud disability end up tainting the names of organizations that deal with disability cases. It is surprising to note that some may receive disability payment, yet, they are working. This is evident in 2006, Massachusetts case where an individual was convicted of receiving many dollars for disability payment, yet, he was working in his bar (Rashbaum and James par 3). In this view, this paper focuses on discussing reasons why some people take the advantage of the welfare systems because it hurts those who need. This will be achieved while evaluating the cartoons provided.The cartoonist could be a member of a welfare organization who wants to show how public officials misuse their office by engaging in disability fraud. According to the cartoonist, those who practice disability fraud pretend to reduce the rate of unemployment (Bokbluster par 2). This is because he or she says that he went on disability, implying that the person feigned some certificates to receive payment for disability. This cartoon was designed by Bokbluster and published by Word Press (Bokbluster par 3)
It is worrying to state that there are even people who are trained to fake that they are not able to work (Tritch par 2). For example, many retired New York City police officers went for psychiatric exams when they were disoriented almost following the identical script (Rashbaum and James par 4). This is because they had been trained on failing memory tests and feigning panic attacks. The disability was justified by their ability to talk about fear of airplanes and skyscrapers because they had worked on September 11, 2001, terrorist attack (Rashbaum and James par 4).
According to me, this is a moral hazard and should be mitigated and a way of reducing employment rates. There are people with real disabilities, and it sounds immoral to imitate them. By feigning information to benefit from the disability payment, people who are challenged in one way or the other are hurt. Besides, there are better and positive strategies that can be utilized to handle the employment rates. The question that should be clarified is whether the governments are aware of the agents of the fraud disability. In fact, the blame should be on them because the principal beneficiary might not know the effects of the actions more than the person who is assisted to fake the information. Additionally, those who help people to fake information act as the facilitators of the disability fraud and should be penalized heavily, based on the fact that they torture the physically challenged people psychologically. Considering that some of these people were born with the disability, parties engaged fraud disability should be warned. In fact, no one would wish to be born with the disability, and the physically challenged people would wish to be normal, just like other people. I urge such people to work hard and seek employment to earn the money that they want. It is painful to fake information to be like some people who have some deformity, which they have not because they chose them, but because they are as a result of nature. There are better ways through which high employment rates can be reduced. The government can create jobs in various sectors. However, this may not be the solution because some do not engage in disability fraud because they are not working. In this view, fraud system should be improved to detect people who are not disabled. This is because other strategies of qualifying to be physically challenged are high.
- Bokbluster, unemployment. 2013. PDF file. 22 Oct. 2015. < http://bokbluster.com/2013/04/06/unemployment-editorial-cartoon/.>
- Rashbaum, William, and McKnley Jr, James. “Charges for 106 in huge fraud over disability.” The New York Times, 7 Jan 2014 late ed.: Al. Print.
- Tritch, Teresa, “Bursting the myths about disability fraud.” The New York Times, 8 Sep. 2015 late ed.: Al. Print.
- Tunley, Martin. “Need, greed or opportunity? An examination of who commits benefits fraud and why they do it.” Security Journal 24.4 (2011): 302-319.
