As a disabled person in the United States, I've always struggled to understand a very real fact: With very few exceptions everyone who applies for the Disability program in the USA is denied the 1st time they apply.
In fact, only 43% of applicants seems to make it into the program at all, often after years of appeals (1.2% declare bankruptcy they can never escape & 1.3%, roughly a thousand people a year, die in the waiting process; those numbers increases the more people apply).*
I've tried looking for podcasts, videos, and articles to find out who, but to no avail. I've read A Disability History of the United States, and even written the author (Kim Nielsen, a very nice person), but I can't seem to find the answer to who started it, or at the very least who established the pseudo-tradition.
Like, some human, at some point, set the pattern into place, and X number of years later something like 10,000 people died between 2008 & 2019 because of it. In part because "that's just what we've always done". But, given the way history (and organizations started by the government) seem to work someone had to be involved. Someone had to be the first person to deny a disabled person the right to live; someone had to write the by laws they followed; someone had to set the precedent which became the common practice.
And I want to find out who. And when. And how they did it; like how the rules for denial were created. The "why" is pretty obvious ("funding", eugenics, ableism, puritanicalism, etc), but if it's not obvious, I would love to know what it was. I would really like to have a specific face to point to when people me ask "Why is the Disability system so messed up in America?"
I've posted this before but they said I needed to ask more than who; I'd just assumed by explaining who, other unasked questions were implied such as "how did a person come to think denying the disabled aid was a correct thing to do". Then they said my header wasn't right. Hopefully the 3rd time is the charm.
Please & thank you.
You've asked the question in a way that makes it tricky to give a historical answer. If you asked about who did the most sustained "attack" on the disability rolls, I'd say maybe Reagan, as his administration took the provision part of a 1980 law calling for Continuing Disability Investigations -- essentially, looking for people already classified as disabled that it was decided no longer were, resulting in an eye-popping (and clearly, in retrospect, erroneous) 42% termination rate in 1983 -- and ran with it so hard that it resulted in Congress passing the 1984 Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act (with zero no votes!), pulling back back the level of investigation. While Reagan himself signed the 1984 bill without protest, and even had investigations suspended while the bill was being formulated, he would still be a decent candidate for your dartboard; just keep in mind the 1980 bill was during Carter, Reagan just (intentionally) accelerated the process.
In terms of the initial medical approval period, though, you and your dartboard are out of luck; you have a process that all countries follow, it is just the US is more strict than most (roughly around only 30% are approved on the first try, this can vary by state/year). 4.7% of working age adults are on some form of disability as compared to a 6% average of the OECD in general. It is not the case that any countries simply presume that anyone applies for disability can get it, nor was it the case that the US disability program at one point in time accepted all applications and got contaminated. (Just for a brief comparison, France's disabled allowance is on the basis of a "disability severity rating" as assessed by the Committee for the Rights and Self-dependency of Disabled Persons, and those under 50% do not qualify at all.)
There were calls for some forms of disability right when Social Security passed in the 1930s but it took until Eisenhower in the 50s before the first disability took effect; however, it only did so for workers between ages 50 and 65, and of disabled children so long as the children were of retired or deceased workers. So already, we have a reversal of narrative: there was nothing at all, and it took protracted work in order to get some people covered. The bill eventually passed the Senate only 47 to 45.
Parts were added by steps. 1958 had dependents get added; 1960 significantly dropped the 50 year age requirement. 1965 removed a "long-continued and indefinite duration" clause and swapped with "a continuous period of not less than 12 months" -- in other words, swapping permanent disability with allowing for the possibility of only temporary disability.
1967 is perhaps the first moment that you're worrying about: it's a moment where things got pulled back rather than added, as there was concern about "the rising cost of the disability insurance program". The 1967 amendments specifically narrowed disability such that a person was "... not only unable to do his previous work but cannot, considering his age, education, and work experience, engage in any other kind of substantial gainful work which exists in the national economy, regardless of whether such work exists in the immediate area in which he lives, or whether a specific job vacancy exists for him, or whether he would be hired if he applied for work."
This is where I'd say things got very messy for applicants, and the closest to a moment of transition like you're thinking. Not only did someone have to prove they were too disabled their current job, but they had to prove they were too disabled to do any job. (Keep in mind, though, the original disability only started at age 50!) But we're talking Johnson in power, the one who also declared War on Poverty, the one who pushed forwards the Civil Rights Act. It's hard to say we have a "dartboard" moment as much as an extra shovel of bureaucracy making things much more complicated. So to answer "how did they get away with it", there wasn't just one person, and there wasn't necessarily malicious intent. It is true the numbers of people on disability were soon frozen from there; from the 1970 to 2008 period while there was a growth in people on disability, nearly all of it (94%) is explainable by demographic growth.