Just In Case You Wondered How Repugnant Obama's People Are

Peter Orzag, in his last column for the New York Times before accepting his bribe from starting his new job with Citigroup, calls for gutting disability insurance because the problem is that people are just lazy malingerers:

Finally, the disability insurance program itself must be reformed. Program administrators understand the need to encourage beneficiaries to return to work, and they have experimented with various incentives. Such initiatives have generally been ineffective, though, because they reach beneficiaries too late, after they have already become dependent on the program and lost their attachment to the work force.

A better approach has been suggested by David Autor of M.I.T. and Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland. In a paper released last week from the Center for American Progress and the Hamilton Project, these economists argue that employers should be required to offer their workers private disability insurance. Such coverage would provide people who have a work-limiting disability with vocational assistance, workplace accommodation and limited wage replacement. All of these benefits would kick in within 90 days of the onset of disability, to avoid the problems with delayed assistance that have plagued efforts to reform public disability insurance. Private employers would have an incentive to prevent their workers from having to file disability applications, because their insurance premiums would rise in response to higher disability rates.

Disabled workers could remain on this privately financed insurance for two years, and then be eligible for the existing public program. The goal would be to minimize long-term dependency, and re-orient the federal disability insurance program toward assisting those who are truly unable to work.

(emphasis mine)

If you do not believe that Barack Obama and His Evil Minions^™ want to privatize Social Security, you are a fool, because one of his closest confidants is suggesting privatizing disability insurance.

Think about this, with unemployment at a generational high, and new entrants to the work force unable to find jobs, Orzag wants something akin to insurance recission teams, the people who kicked cancer patients out of health insurance programs, to hound people who are on disability.

Basically, every person who is on disability is someone who is not competing with a kid fresh out of high school or college looking for their first job.

That's what, having "incentive to prevent their workers from having to file disability applications," means. It means allowing employers to use coercion to intimidate sick people so that they do not file claims.

This is how Peter Orzag rolls, and this is how Timmy Geithner rolls, and this is how Lawrence Summers rolls.

This is not a mistake.  These are people who the President chose to execute his agenda, and the agenda is seriously right wing by any sane standard.  (Note here that "sane standard" and "Republican Party" had a messy divorce in the 1990s.)