Reminder: people on disability insurance wish they didn’t have to be

There’s a pervasive myth that Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is easily abused. Current Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says things like, “Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts,” which is patently false, and Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s current budget director, has even bragged that he tricked Trump into making cuts to the program by misleading him about what it was.

The reality, of course, is that the program is an important safety net for people who are too young to retire but unable to work. “It’s a stingy, hard-to-access program that helps some of the country’s most desperate citizens scrape by; applying takes months or years, and more than 60 percent of applicants wind up being rejected anyway,” writes Vox’s Dylan Matthews.

Sean Rameswaram talked to Dylan for the latest episode of Today, Explained about whom SSDI helps and why the misconceptions are so dangerous.

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