From the Bradenton (FL) Herald:
On good days, Michele Saber can get up, get dressed and move around her apartment, but she can't go far. Even on those good days, Saber frequently blacks out four to six times before lunch.
On bad days, the 29-year-old former Bradenton police officer can't get out of bed. ...
Yet Saber's efforts to collect Social Security disability benefits have been met with repeated denials.
Along with almost 15,000 people in the Tampa Bay area, Saber is waiting for a hearing before an administrative law judge who will hear her next appeal.
She has been waiting for that hearing date since April 2, 2007.
Her attorneys say she will likely be waiting a lot longer - perhaps more than two years - because of a backlog in appeals cases. ...
"Social Security has a very rigid definition of disability that has to be backed up by medical evidence and the tons of paperwork that has to be completed precisely," says Dan Allsup of Allsup, Inc., a national company that represents applicants. Most of the staff at Allsup are former Social Security employees.
"We can present a completed, properly documented case to Social Security where all they have to do is say yes or no. This is a tremendous time saver for the government and the applicants."
Nonetheless, Allsup only accepts 8 percent of the potential applicants who ask for help. Of those applicants, half get their benefits at the first step of the process.
Screening prospect calls so well that you take on only 8% of the people who call; screening so well that you win 50% at the initial level? Now that's cherry picking!
2 comments:
Even after cherry-picking, they only win 50 percent at the initial claim level? That is not much different than the standard allowance rate in some states.
But that's of the few that ask them for help. The vast majority of people Allsup "represents" are given to them by their disability insurance clients. I'm sure they don't just cherry pick 8% of those from whom they hope to "recover" an overpayment.
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