Fact-checking Rand Paul's disability claims
"Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts," said Paul, who is an ophthalmologist. "Everybody in this room knows somebody who's gaming the system."
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Those are some pretty hefty accusations that feed into the standard conservative line that social security is another mismanaged, abused and bloated government program. And of course, Democrats didn't skip a beat in going after him for the comments.
But let's dig into Paul's claims.
Are more than half the people receiving disability checks from the government cashing in on back pain and anxiety?
Paul may have gotten a little bit carried away with all this talk of government waste and abuse when he got into the disability figures.
The share of back pain and anxiety sufferers doesn't crack 50%, not even when you lump in the broader categories of "mood disorders" --14% of disability beneficiaries -- and "musculoskeletal system and connective tissue" diseases, which account for 29% of total beneficiaries.
You can even add in the 4.9% of people receiving disability checks for "injuries" and you still don't reach Paul's 50% threshold.
How common are back pain and anxiety anyway?
Back pain is a pretty pervasive issue in the U.S. In fact, it's the leading cause of disability in Americans under 45 years old according to the National Center for Health Statistics. And 26 million Americans aged 20 to 64 experience frequent back pain -- that's just more than 8% of the U.S. population.
See the article here:
Fact-checking Rand Paul's disability claims