Would chronic back problems and arthritic joints in your extremities stop you from going 18 holes several times a week? Simple logic dictates it would, but for 11 retired Long Island Rail Road employees, the rules of logic don’t apply — at least according to their disability claims.
All is not what it appears. The same 11 LIRR retirees are being charged with falsifying disability claims and could face up to 20 years in prison.
I guess that explains Steve Gagliano’s participation in a 400-mile bike tour this summer, because there definitely wasn’t a section of the tour for people suffering from “severe and disabling back pain.”
The scandal has been under investigation since 2008, and new findings in the case prove that it goes deeper than once thought. Several retirees have earned upwards of six figures per year in pension and disability, claiming to have conditions such as chronic back pain and arthritis, only to be found swinging golf clubs, going to aerobics classes and riding bikes.
Retirees have been paying doctors between $800 and $1,200 for each medical form. These doctors are also facing criminal charges. According to a report in The New York Times, doctors were paid “for each fake assessment and narrative, in addition to the millions of dollars in health insurance payments they received for unnecessary medical treatments and fees for preparing false medical records to support the disability claims.”
Right, because doctors from Nassau County need to accept bribes to feed their families. They might as well stop accepting this under-the-table money and let the welfare checks flow in. Something doesn’t add up.
The LIRR’s pension rates are already three times that of the average railroad’s rates of the Metro Transit Authority, its parent organization, which is already in heavy debt. And with fare hikes on the LIRR becoming commonplace, one has to ask how such an egregious scandal went unnoticed for so long.
Greedy employees and crooked doctors are one thing; these people face prison sentences and the law will handle them, but the LIRR needs to make amends with its passengers and assure Long Island commuters that the steep fees they pay to get to work don’t go to fake disability claims.
LIRR employees work long, unusual hours, often having to deal with rambunctious passengers — come on, have you ever been on that 2:53 a.m. train? They definitely deserve full retirement benefits.
But taxpayers and federal pension agencies are not responsible for providing retirees income they neither need nor deserve — income that has essentially become petty cash for former LIRR employees to subsidize the cost of their weekly golf game.
At a time when many of our country’s citizens are battling on behalf of “the 99 percent,” trying to close the gaps of economic inequality, this paints an ugly picture. This scandal gives the working class just one less leg to stand on.
The LIRR and local governance must respond swiftly and assure us that not all is lost in the way of workers’ rights — that this is an anomaly, not a norm — and that our commuting fees are not for naught.