Disabled worker cases at record

[Omaha Steve]

Source: USA Today

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
The Social Security Administration faces a record — and rapidly growing — backlog of appeals by people who claim they are too disabled to work. Through June, it had just over 745,000 cases pending, and the wait for a hearing averaged 17 months, also a record.

Claimants in some parts of the country must wait up to 31 months, according to the agency. "People have died waiting for a hearing," Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue says.


By Todd Bennett for USA TODAY
Linda Cleland helps Jeffery Houston out of his chair as he gets ready for breakfast in Tempe, Ga. He has severe diabetes and numerous other ailments. He hasn't worked since 1999.

The agency says the backlog doubled in six years and could reach 1 million by 2010.

Astrue is trying to reduce the waits, but Congress has provided nearly $1 billion less than President Bush sought over the past six years. Field offices have lost more than 2,300 workers in less than two years, leaving the agency with its lowest staffing level since the early 1970s. The agency froze staffing levels for nine months last year after threatening furloughs.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-07-29-disabled_N.htm?csp=34

[hollowdweller]

1. They were really counting on technology to allow them to cut staff but it's not happening

It's not really saving that much time. A lot of the medical community is just not up to SS's level of automation yet and that interface between the two is still causing a lot of delays.

Plus there has been a really big push for excessive documentation of cases so that is really slowing the processing of the claims at the DDS level. In addition it seems like the policy arm is being much stricter in allowing claimants to be allowed on a medical vocational basis and that means that people who are pretty bad off, but don't meet the listing or meet the medical vocational guidelines have to appeal their cases to the Administrative Law Judge level and the ALJ's and hearings are super slow anyway so they are getting overwhelmed.

It's interesting because even into a good part of the Bush admin it seemed like policy was being set to allow more claimants by relaxing documentation requirements of cases that were pretty much allowances but sort of iffy. But in the last year or so both the standards for medical and vocational allowances has seemingly tightened up requiring caseworkers to pursue hard to get documentation to be able to allow them.

[catnhatnh]

2. You can't handle the truth....

....fakers and liars get in by simple persistence.No one is admitted in the first round no matter how injured.To my knowledge recipients include people "suffering" from ADHD-as in work distresses them.I blew out three discs in my prime earning years.I found myself denied benefits and subjected to pychiatric revue where I was evaluated as "borderline" but capable of full time work-where I could not "bend,twist or lift over 10 lbs occassionally and should not be subjected to "any direct criticism" but should recieve "maximum positive support"...Wanna hire me??? In point of fact,just before my injury, I worked rotating 12.5 hour shifts either driving a forklift and moving heavier weights or running a computerized cutting station where up to 15 times an hour I was required to submit 19 measurements from a tape rule and a digital micrometer whithin two minutes...do I sound flaky?
So eventually,yes,they agreed to pay me along with the flakes...But their "backlog" is their own-a simple reading of existing documents would have shown that on night "X", I went to work at 5"11" and that at the close of the shift (after a hospital visit), I stood at 5'10"...
Two years later they paid me,plus interest-too bad I needed the lawyer who recieved his third.I don't cry for Evita and certainly not for their sorrows...

[partylessinOhio]

3. I have great empathy for anyone too ill to work and having to wait so long

to get disability and medical coverage. I've been there myself, I went ten months without even 5 cents of income. I could never have made it for 31 months. If the person is self-supporting it is a disaster to lose your ability to earn your living.

With the greedy mentality of many Americans, I don't see much sympathy for the plight of disabled persons and any groundswell to speedup the start date of their benefits that they are entitled.

This fate could befall anyone. In my wildest nightmare I never thought this could happen to me.

:cry:

[AwakeAtLast]

4. My cousin, who has a documented muscular dystrophy diagnosis

had to wait three years for her disability to go through. The good thing about living in a small town is the bank that had the loan to her house told her to pay what she could (from her husband wages) on the interest only. That helped, but toward the end, it was getting aggravating!

I'm sorry you also had to go through it. Just watching from the wings wasn't much fun. :hug:

[cutlassmama]

5. It took me 24 months (2 years) to get approved. I have 15

that's right FIFTEEN medical problems and take 23 prescription drugs a day. They had five feet of documentation from my five doctors, yet I still had to go before an ALJ to get it approved. If my mother hadn't been alive then I would have literally starved to death.

In the meantime, my son, who has ONE diagnosis "autism" was given it within 2 months. :crazy:

I have also heard about the "waiting game" thing they play with us and was outraged. I worked for 26 years. It's not like I was a "faker". I literally could NOT work anymore. I still get remarks from people if they find out I've gotten approved. I'm bed bound, have had 5 operations this year and going to to have two more. I hate the remarks "it must be nice"...NO, it's not nice...not nice to go to five doctors, not nice to have operations, not nice to be in pain, not nice to be able not to do things anymore. It all sucks.

[Lugnut]

6. It must be nice?

How crude. I've been disabled since 1994 and nobody was ever so cruel to say that to me.

Fortuntely for me I was approved within three weeks of my initial application. Unfortunately for me my diagnosis was spinal cord injury which is pretty tough to dispute. Even so I had to wait six months from the approval date for my first SSDI check to arrive. Those are the SSDI rules.

My husband was working so the income loss wasn't a severe hardship for us. The impact wasn't anything we couldn't financially handle. That's not the case for too many people who are caught up in the backlogged system. It's a travesty.

[cutlassmama]

8. People on other boards have actually typed that to me. :( eom

[Dogmudgeon]

7. I'm there right now

Here's my disease: I had a low-grade cancer in my ear when I was a kid. It went undetected and untreated until I was 18. The tissue damage and the surgical damage together destroyed the ear. My body has developed an antibody response and is rejecting ALL the tissue, in both ears. I have almost no hearing, no balance, am chronically disoriented and in chronic pain. For THIRTY years.

But I can still write. I used to be a hot-shit coder, but I can't manage a simple file-copying script these days. Yet I can still handle prose, for which I am deeply grateful.

Got my third rejection on Friday, based on "willful failure to file in a timely manner". Except that I filed well within the alloted time period. My state vouches for me. Well, tough.

So, finally, I'm getting a lawyer. Now that the legal system will get its cut, I should get better service.

No health insurance for 14 years led to chronic degenerative illness led to inability to work since about 2002 which has led me here. I recently went through my life's working records from the Social Security Administration and my old bank accounts, and if I had moved to Canada in 1978, I would have been able to put close to $500,000 (US) away and be enjoying better health.

I'm 49. Worked my ass off in school and on every job I held. These days? No money. No career. No wife, no kids, no house in the 'burbs with the picket fence. I live with Mom, the ultimate shame on the Internet. No real life -- a little on-line.

A friend of mine who's a lawyer advised me to develop bipolar disorder -- it's been fast-tracked, and I'm too old for autism, though one of my nephews has it. I feel bad for the people who are bipolar and for autistic kids, but medical help should not depend on the "popularity" of an illness among the rich people who run the non-profits.

Even now, I have to BEG for medical treatment beyond the basics. My regular MD is an intern, and I've ended up teaching HIM clinical neurology (I was in that field for about 10 years). I finally got to see the appropriate specialist last week, after TEN YEARS of trying, even during the brief period at the end of the Clinton Administration when I did manage to get semi-adequate coverage.

Damned right I'm pissed off.

Where the fuck did I go wrong?

--p!