The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting on the effects that Social Security's horrible backlogs are having on disabled people. Here are some excerpts:
...[T]he system is backlogged to the point of near-absurdity. Local applicants can wait up to two years for a hearing before a judge, with many cities facing longer waits. A hearing is scheduled after applicants have already been denied — as most typically initially are — a process in itself that can take up to eight months.
And so as the bureaucratic clock creeps toward a hearing, many applicants are faced, month after month, with slashed household income, dwindling or drained savings accounts and often no option left but to pile car payments, mortgage payments, the electricity bill and prescriptions and groceries on to credit cards....
A staffer in the Washington, D.C., office of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas — who is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee where he serves as the chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee and sits on the Health Subcommittee referred calls to health adviser Darren Webb.
Webb, however, did not return an email message. ...
A Fort Worth woman who has had breast cancer, has undergone heart surgery and suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that limits her lung functionality to 54 percent, filed her initial disability claim two years ago. She isn’t scheduled for her hearing until early 2018.
She said she is “appalled at the process” and was too scared to be quoted by name for this story because she feared jeopardizing her chances at winning her claim, or delaying the process further. She said she has “has always worked and paid my taxes,” but is now in “serious financial problems.” If not for her ex-husband helping her pay bills, she said she would have lost her house through this process. ...
21 comments:
Bad decision on the part of the woman. Had her name been out there, someone would have expedited her case to show the agency isn't struggling that much.
And then she goes in front of a horrible Dallas area judge who mistreats her in the hearing and denies her claim.
Why are all the clerical workers and support staff teleworking three or four days a week with no accountability and no numerical standards for getting the work done? It is very difficult to imagine the judges being able to hold hearings and move cases without any support staff in the office. Current leadership has no actual experience in the hearing office and it is hard to imagine someone without hearing office experience being able to effectively bring about change when the person has no real experience as to how the hearing office functions to begin with. And of course we continue to lack a permanent Commisioner....
@9:22
Not to mention the irony of calling Sam Johnson for help regarding delays from a backlog which he bears a great responsibility for creating. He gets a report every year with projections on how Congress' funding of SSA operations will impact the backlog. He has a leadership position in Congress regarding budget and Social Security. He and his colleagues still underfund agency operations and just as the reports predict the backlog swells and service is reduced.
Good to see the media get it right. As for telework - it's the mandated precursor to "shrinking the government's footprint" by dramatically reducing office space through "hoteling". While telework robs individuals and their agencies of the incredible value from collegial interaction at the workplace, it does not degrade productivity. Those who worked at the office, work at home. Those who didn't, don't. the 10% are always with us.
"It is very difficult to imagine the judges being able to hold hearings and move cases without any support staff in the office."
Why? People who work in the office also work at home. People who aren't working at home typically aren't really working in the office as well. There isn't a whole lot of need for support staff to be in the office so long as they do their jobs. It's a very rare occasion that someone in the office would need to be there to support the judge. E-mail, IMs, phone calls, etc. can handle the vast majority of issues. There is never an instance where there is no support staff in the office to handle those very rare instances.
The backlog could also be vastly reduced if only disabled people filed applications. However, anyone can file an application, appeal it, and/or request a hearing regardless of how capable they are. It would also be reduced if, according to the Allsups rep "people [are] simply asking for a yes or no from the government." There has to be a detailed explanation of any number of factors to be legally sufficient, and even then, there are some district courts that will never affirm an ALJ's decision. If it were thumbs up or thumbs down without the need for VE testimony, ME testimony, detailed decisions explaining all of the factors involved in a denial, etc., there would be no backlog, either... and there are some folks that are openly advocating that we go to that system and get rid of the hearing level.
9:40 AM The backlog could also be vastly reduced if people who cannot work are approved earlier instead of having to drag out thus process to the bitter end! Instead of DDS initial denial, reconsideration denial, then a denial after a hearing... claiming there are 3 jobs someone can do, while dismissing witness statements... I am sure I will eventually be approved. But, it seems that they just want to screw me out of as much as they can. There clearly is no incentive for SSA to make the right decision, only to deny as many as they can for as long as they can
The backlog could also be reduced by the number of postponements. We have multiple claimant's that could get representation PRIOR to their hearing date. They wait two years for a date, then get to the hearing and request a postponement. This creates backlog. Telework has nothing to do with the backlog. Part of the issue is hiring 500 new ALJ's with no support staff. The only items that you can't do on telework are; Paper cases, Mail CD's, and fax items. Everything else you can do in the office, you can do from a remote location. Also, there are many people in my office that give up their telework days because of the way our workload is structured. Each SCT could have 500 cases assigned in their name at one time, that equals a voluminous amount of mail, faxes and phone calls alone coming in for those cases. There are many things that could be done to eliminate the backlog, but who is listening?
I think that the ODAR should do more to encourage claimant's to get representation early in the process.
Some of the ALJs in my area are scheduling "hearings" for unreped claimants early in the process. If the claimants don't show up then they issue a show cause and end up dismissing the case.
If the claimant shows up the ALJ spends a 15 min. explaining everything that the claimant has to prove and how they have to gather evidence. The ALJ then gives them a copy of their file and tells them that the hearing will be rescheduled at a later date after the claimant provides all of the updated medical.
Most Claimants get reps when they realized how extensive the hearing will be. If more ALJs did this, then I think more claimants would get reps early in the process, which would avoid delays.
Everybody appears to be filing for social security for the fun of it! I wish they would just stop!
And the Programs allow an individual to appeal, re-file, and appeal despite being denied several times over the years. At some point, many just don't meet the criteria for SS disability. But they continued to file and appeal for decades. Thus, clogging the system for others and wasting your tax dollars.
8:18 AM. Just because someone has been denied, even multiple times, doesn't mean they they don't meet the criteria for SSDI/SSI. These decisions are made by people who have never or only briefly met the claimant. Opinions are given by "experts" whole have no real knowledge of the claimant or their real capabilities. Even doctors that have "treated" them have only seen them a relatively short period of time in settings that incapable of and not designed to determine someone's real capabilities. Your statement assumes that the correct decision was made at these denials. Yet, the subsequent determinations are often made upon the same assumptions and often the same RFC determination that was originally decided, even after piles of additional medical evidence.
So, what do you expect a wrongfully denied claimant to do? What choice do they have but appeal, appeal, appeal? I would be glad to drop my appeals... If I had ANY alternative. The only ones I can think of involve a gun, a knife, a rope or a bottle of pills. But, I owe too much to my family for those...
Most of the denials come from those buffet disability claims, the combo of a lot of different little conditions. Those that meet a listing with straight up medical support get approved, the combo platters take more time. Even if SSA did something similar to the VA and gave a percentage of disability we would see appeals that I am more the 50%, 60% or whatever.
I do not know of any situation that has ever gotten better by adding more lawyers.
@10:27
I'm curious as to why you think that "adding lawyers," for instance encouraging more representation of disability claimants, is a bad thing.
@8:18
The system has to allow appeals and new filings because adjudicators do sometimes make mistakes, and medical conditions can change for the worse. Many medical conditions are degenerative and get worse with time.
Yes, some file even though they don't meet the disability standard. However, the disability standard is complex and difficult to understand for a lay person, perhaps impossible to understand for some people with limited education and/or mental illness. There are many documented examples of highly educated ALJs (whose job it is to understand and apply the disability standards) making errors in applying those standards. That being true you should not be surprised that some claimants may not have perfect knowledge of whether they meet the disability standard when they file.
10:27 AM I don't consider Ankylosing Spondylitis and Fibromyalgia to be "little things." Neither would anyone else unfortunate to have them. I think a lot of it is familiarity. People hear cancer or brain tumor or ALS and they know what that means. Lupus? What's that? Rheumatoid arthritis... I hear that's terrible! Osteoarthritis? Well, EVERYBODY has that. Some diseases, like ALS, have listings that people are quickly going to meet. Others, like Ankylosing Spondylitis, have listings set so only a few will ever meet them. In fact, the listing for AS seems DESIGNED that way. I also had epilepsy until I was 33. People would see me have a seizure or hear about it and the grand mals had huge impacts on them. The same people who have seen me with a migraine, caused by dry eye syndrome/eyelashes in eye, say something like, "Oh, that's not good. I get headaches, too." The migraines I am talking about make my head feel like it's going to explode... and sometimes wish it would... just to get it over with. For me, the migraines are far more debilitating, far more frequent and last far longer. The ALJ seemed much more interested in seizures I no longer have and was dismissive about the migraines. He didn't include it at all in his hypothetical, nor several other things. Basically, he just went with DDS's initial RFC, which allowed him to deny, while dismissing all the evidence that contradicted it.
@6:05 SSDI is a lot like LTD claims, all of which are completed much cheaper and much faster than SSDI and all without the aid of an Almost Like a Judge or a Representative (Atty or non-Atty). This isn't rocket science, but I do enjoy the Molehill Mountain made of it here.
@ 818--Well those that file for T2 eventually won't be able to file when they are denied and have appealed through their date last insured. Then they become a technical denial--usually. But SSI folks can file forever since they don't have to meet insured status.
"A hearing is scheduled after applicants have already been denied." Mull that sentence over a couple of times.
They have been denied, in most instance twice, initial and recon. Nothing to mull there.
What about the fact that DDS adjudicators often have little to no medical or disability claims experience? In one office in San Francisco a senior DDS examiner use to be a graphics designer.
How about hiring claims examiners who actually have the background and experience to adjudicate claims properly?
Also why are hearing offices making claimants wait 6 months for a formal decision when they already know how the ALJ has decided?
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