GBO NEWS: 60 Minutes’ Disability Fraud; Seniors’ Real Hunger Games
GBO NEWS: GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Oct. 9, 2013 — Volume 13, Number 14
Editor’s Note: The new “GBO News” marks the 20th year of the Journalists Network on Generations. Click through this table of contents to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. This format is “scalable” for computer, e-pad or mobile. Let us know what you think of the new format.
IN THIS ISSUE: Sequester the Shut Down.
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL: “60 Minutes” Shuts Down Truth on Disability
2. THE REAL HUNGER GAMES: The Nation on Elders’ Growing Hunger
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***NYT’s “New Old Age” Blogger Paula Span to Keynote in Canada; ***Katy Butler’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door Hits Bestseller Status
4. SOURCES: ***Source Link for New York Times Editorial, “Getting Older, Growing Poorer”; *** Public Policy & Aging E-Newsletter for Sources Ranging from Long-Term Care Commission to World Aging Facts and Stats; ***Free National Press Foundation Webinar on “Understanding the Health Care Exchanges”
1. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
“60 Minutes” Shuts Down Truth on Disability
“Is it possible for a major news organization to produce a story about the Social Security disability program without interviewing a single disabled person or disability advocate,” asks the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzik?
“There were any number of experts who could have been interviewed on this topic to counterbalance the views of a far-right senator who is best known as a denier of global warming,” writes progressive economist Dean Baker on his “Beat the Press” blog.
No, the media culprit in question is not that reliable liberal piñata, Fox News, but the venerated “60 Minutes.” Steve “Gotcha” Kroft was at it again on Sunday (Oct. 6), this time chasing down a disability attorney accused of plundering the system. The “60 Minutes” segment relied on a new report about purportedly vast fraud in the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. That paper was then presented in a hearing Monday by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who anchored Kroft’s interviews. (Yes, that’s the same Sen. Coburn who has proudly declared himself a “global warming denier” and who on Monday stated “no such thing as a debt ceiling.” Different issues, you may think, but then Kroft and company didn’t question the senator’s motives in his staff’s “report” or do anything to cast light (or get an alternative quote) on his views about public benefits. For example, Coburn is, not incidentally, the same politician well known to be hostile to Social Security.
While fraud surely happens in any large governmental sector – say, defense — Media Matters blogger Hannah Groch-Begley cited criticism of the “60 Minutes” program by a range of disability groups. She quotes, Lisa Ekman, director of federal policy at Health & Disability Advocates, saying the organization was “extremely disappointed that 60 Minutes chose to air such a one-sided story based on anecdote and supposition … Misleading media reports like the one on 60 Minutes distract from focusing on the real issue of helping American workers with and without disabilities achieve economic security.”
Well, sure advocates will be critical by nature. Investigative reporters are trained to be thick skinned about criticism from this side or that. But man-of-steel attitude only works behind the fortification of thorough and balanced reporting. Right?
In this case, though, Kroft and his producers had a long and visible list of potential authorities who could have countermanded the one-sided claims. Essentially, the Kroft segment alleges that even though disability claims have increased in the recession among sad and desperate Americans who perhaps should remain blameless, the system is being widely gamed by unscrupulous lawyers who are getting people on the public dole willy nilly. That framing may sound familiar to some—because “60 Minutes” echoed the heavily criticized piece aired on the otherwise fine and meticulous “This American Life” last spring.
That piece, by NPR’s Planet Money Team, drew among other challenges, what should be regarded as a devastating letter contesting its conclusions of massive and rising fraud. A bipartisan list of eight former U.S. Commissioners of Social Security stated in the open letter that the “The American Life” program “failed to tell the whole story and perpetuated dangerous myths about the Social Security disability programs and the people helped by this vital system.” But Kroft and company over at “60Minutes” didn’t bother interviewing any of them. Or how about the Chief Actuary of Social Security Steven Goss?
In his LA Times business column, Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize winner, notes, “The [disability] rolls have grown consistently since 1980, but even though Coburn professes to be dumbfounded why, there’s no mystery. As Goss laid out the factors, they include a 41% increase in the total population aged 20-64. Then there’s the demographic aging of America, which has increased the prevalence of disability by 38%.” Add to that the job losses of older workers in the recession, and recent increases are hardly mysterious.
Hiltzik’s column, headlined, “’60 Minutes” Shameful Attack on the Disabled,”continues, “The most pernicious lie told about the disability program is that it’s easy to obtain benefits. ‘60 Minutes’ repeated that lie. The truth is that disability standards are stringent, and they’re applied stringently. Two-thirds of all applicants are initially denied, though 10% or so of all applicants win benefits on appeal. All in all, 41% of all applicants end up with checks. Sound easy to you?”
So, what’s the big deal if a big-time hack like Kroft and company fall short in their homework? Maybe Kroft can top Sen. Coburn and declare himself a “fairness and balance denier.” As the eight former Social Security Commissioners stated in their letter, “We fear that listeners may come away with an incorrect impression of the program—as opposed to an understanding of the program actually based on facts.” The potential consequences, they wrote, could undermine a program vital to millions of Americans who can no longer work.
2. THE REAL HUNGER GAMES
*** In “The Real Hunger Games” (The Nation, Sept. 27, 2013), veteran journalist Trudy Lieberman reprises her 1998 “Hunger in America” investigation on senior poverty, also for The Nation and later for Aging Today. Again she finds a “world of food rationing for the elderly—the hidden hunger few ever see.”
Lieberman, whose incisive analyses of federal health and social policy appears regularly in the Columbia Journalism Review, interviewed people around the nation, such as Eva Perdue, 64, of Atlanta, a widow raising her teenage grandson. “She has little money to buy any food, let alone healthy food: $98 is all she has after bills are paid from her $848 monthly Social Security check plus $68 worth of food stamps.”
Meals on Wheels Atlanta told Lieberman, “In 2012, the program served 106,000 meals—up from 84,000 three years before—and it will serve about 114,000 this year. ‘We’ve been able to up our game and reduce the waiting list to between 145 and 160 seniors, but the need has outpaced us,’ says executive director Jeffrey Smythe. ‘The numbers are going up more quickly than we projected.’”
Lieberman goes on, “The reason is simple: there’s not enough money from federal, state or local governments to support most of the country’s meal programs, or from private organizations that fund those like Smythe’s.”
Nationally, she continues, “While funding for home-delivered meals increased 43 percent from 2001 to 2011, the number of seniors facing the threat of hunger rose 87 percent in that period. At the same time, prices for food, gasoline and other services increased 27 percent. Looked at another way, inflation-adjusted per capita spending on home-delivered meals for people over age 60 (the eligible population) declined from $4.16 in 2001 to $3.67 in 2011, nearly a 12 percent decrease. That has meant a reduction in the number of seniors served from about 941,000 in 2005 to 856,000 in 2011. Why the disconnect? ‘This is a discretionary program, and [more funding] hasn’t been the discourse permitted in recent Congresses,’ says Edwin Walker, deputy assistant secretary in the US Administration on Aging.
How about those “savings” in federal dollars because, presumably, we can keep taking care of everyone. According to Lieberman, while the sequester may save $11 million this year, “the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) calculates the government could spend nearly $500 million more in Medicaid payments to nursing homes as a result of the cuts. Malnutrition is one of the greatest contributors to costly hospital and nursing home admissions and readmissions.”
The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, Lieberman reports, “says that nearly 60 percent of all [federal] Older Americans Act programs had waiting lists in 2010, but the ones for home-delivered meals are particularly urgent, since food is so basic to good health.”
Despite the aim of the Affordable Care Act of preventing disease and make people healthier, writes Lieberman, “It’s hard to see how that can happen without adequate food. With the sequester cuts, the home-delivered meal program has $11.3 million less to feed the elderly, lowering its federal appropriation for fiscal year 2013 to slightly less than $206 million, down from nearly $217 million for the previous year. Both numbers are peanuts compared with the $29 billion for the National Institutes of Health. The vast sums poured into the NIH have made it possible to live longer, but many can’t afford the basics to live those lives.”
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Paula Span, chief contributor to the “New Old Age” blog in the New York Times, will be keynoting at the Canadian Association on Gerontology national meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Oct. 17-19. Her topic: “Don’t Fear the Media: How Gerontologists Can Talk, Tweet and Blog Their Way to a Greater Role in an Aging Society.”
Span, a former Washington Post reporter also taught for many years at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions (Hachette, 2009.) Formerly a veteran Washington Post reporter, Span taught for years at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and also directed the foundation-funded News21 program, whose fellows produced innovative multimedia content about aging.
Among Span’s more recent “New Old Age” postings have been articles on the lack of sprinkler systems in many nursing homes and a piece raising important questions about new federal rules that, starting in 2015, will give home care workers the same wage minimums and protections of other workers under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
*** Katy Butler’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door is getting its third printing only two weeks after publication, she reports. The book, which GBO News featured in our last issue, is achieving the rare status of a bestseller, at least on some lists, for a book focusing on death and dying. The book begins with the struggles of her late patents to die with dignity. Butler’s website includes a list of readings around the country. Journalists can also get the schedule and request a media kit and review copy from Kate.Lloyd@simonandschuster.com.
4. SOURCES
*** The New York Times Editorial, “Getting Older, Growing Poorer” [http://nyti.ms/GHwyZD] (Oct. 5) notes that “from 2011 to 2012, the rate of extreme poverty rose by a statistically significant amount among those 65 and older, meaning that a growing number of them were living at or below 50 percent of the poverty line.” The piece cites a new report from the National Women’s Law Center, which GBO News readers can find at [http://bit.ly/1fImygr]. The Times Editorial Board states, “The increase in extreme poverty requires utmost attention. For the most part, Social Security has protected older Americans from poverty. In cases where older people are poor, the afflicted often have been very old women, who have long outlived their spouses and any nest egg.”
*** The Public Policy & Aging E-Newsletter may sound like a drab carton-in-the-attic title, but for reporters it will yield treasures more often than those in musty Old Spice boxes forgotten upstairs. The September 2013 issue, for example, includes 15 links to recent reports and articles about funding issues and developments in Washington, the nation and abroad.
The Public Policy & Aging E-Newsletter (PP&A) is a bimonthly publication of the National Academy on an Aging Society, the policy institute of The Gerontological Society of America. For example, if you’re writing about nursing homes and could use a quick link to the final Report to the Congress sent a few weeks ago by the Commission on Long-Term Care, there it is.
Does anyone care or even know that the U.S. scientific community says the sequestration and other budget cuts are undermining vital research, including funding for current studies and the next generation of scientists? The report titled “Unlimited Potential, Vanishing Opportunity“ compiles survey data into a paper depicting the negative effects that cuts have not only on individual scientists and the scientific research community, but on “U.S. global research leadership” in the sciences.
(In a related story, the OECD released a study on Tuesday showing that the United states is fast losing ground to other nations in its knowledge and skills level needed to compete in the 21st century. In a statement on their website, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, said, “With effective education and life-long learning everyone can develop their full potential. The benefits are clear, not only for individuals, but also for societies and for the economy.”)
Other links in the latest PP&A E-Newsletter take readers to the “GLOBAL AGING 2013: Driving Economic Growth” from the influential UK-based organization HelpAge International’s USA affiliate, or to “A Platform for Aging in Place: The Increasing Potential of High-speed Internet Connectivity’ from AARP’s Public Policy Institute.
One that might be of special interest to economics writers is a recent study by Gary Burtless, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, in DC. In new research funded by the Social Security Administration, he asks, “Is an Aging Workforce Less Productive?.
In this summary on the website of Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Burtless considers “whether an aging workforce has dragged down average worker productivity over the past quarter century. At least so far, the answer is an emphatic ‘No’ Improved education among the population past 60 and delays in retirement among better educated Americans have tended to boost the earnings of older workers compared with younger ones.” The summary includes a link to his full study.
Again, take a look at the PP&A E-Newsletter website. Subscribing is free. Also, the quarterly Public Policy & Aging journals are each devoted to one subject with essays by multiple experts (potential story sources). Some recent topics have been, The Global Impact of Aging: The Oldest Old,” “Annuities, Reverse Mortgages, and Long-term Care Insurance: Options for Elders,” and “Vaccination, Prevention, and Older Adults.”
*** “Understanding the Health Care Exchanges” is a free, one-hour webinar for journalists of a program that the National Press Foundation held Oct. 3, featuring Henry J. Aaron, a senior policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and one of the leading social insurance experts in the country. He talked about the state of the exchanges and the differences among them; the marketing battles between advocates and opponents; the insurance reforms that take effect on January 1.
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