NY Times Article On Social Security Disability Backlogs

The New York Times article on Social Security disability backlogs is out. Read the whole article, but here are a few excerpts:

Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.

Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.

But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits for those judged unable to work or who face terminal illness. ...

Progress against the backlog, if it happens, cannot undo the three years that Belinda Virgil of Fayetteville has worried about her future since her initial application was turned down. Tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day because of emphysema and life-threatening sleep apnea, Ms. Virgil lost her apartment and has alternated between a sofa in her daughter’s crowded house and a friend’s place as she waits for answer to her appeal. ...

Richard and Vicki Wild and their adult son Mark, of Hillsborough, were mystified that Mark’s case would ever require a judge.

Hospitalized with increasing frequency since his severe diabetes was discovered at age 19, when he was found unconscious in a bus station, Mark Wild was eager to work as a chef. But over the course of 15 years he tried and lost jobs as a waiter and a cook. He had to drop out of culinary school because he was hospitalized so often, his parents said. ...

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, just a few days before the hearing, Mrs. Wild woke up to find her son gone. On his desk lay his watch, his ring and a bullet.

On that Thursday, Mrs. Wild, 55, got a call at work from their lawyer. “I just wanted to give you the good news,” she said he told her. “Somehow the judge has already approved the disability, it’s a done deal, Mark’s got it.”

Two hours later, a deputy sheriff and a chaplain arrived to say that hunters had found Mark Wild’s body in the woods, dead of a self-inflicted gun wound. ...

Mr. Wild has tried to go back to work, but says he is so depressed that he cannot do his job. He is applying for disability, but knows that he cannot expect an answer anytime soon.