“I have 5 herniated disks,“ said disability insurance applicant Debi Lovell.
Lovell said she has so much pain from degenerative disk disease she has to use a walker to take the pressure off her back.
“My spinal cord is being strangled,“ she said.
Debi says in 2007 her doctor declared her disabled and it’s taken since then to get a final answer from the Social Security Administration about her disability claim. ...
On December 14th 7 On Your Side asked the Social Security Administration in an e-mail why Debi hadn’t received a decision about her hearing. The next day a judge sent a letter to Lovell saying she had been approved.
Dec 30, 2009
Seven On Your Side Gets It Done!
From "News Channel 7" in Spartanburg, SC:
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7 comments:
The Social Security disability process is a clumsy, meandering trail of paperwork that crawls through a complicated series of complex policies and regulations and requirements that are hard to apply consistently across the nation, over the years. We're talking about tens of thousands of well-meaning yet imperfect humans applying hundreds of judgements to millions of cases every year that involve very complicated sets of facts under ever evolving policies and procedures and rules. The current Commissioner is doing a darn good job modernizing the infrastructure and automating as much of the low-hanging fruit as he can reach.
He will leave the agency better off than he found it.
When his tenure's complete, however, the truth about this program will be the same as it ever was: it's a complicated and difficult program to administer with accuracy and speed.
Well, no. The SSA disability process is really not that complicated. Cases sit for months or years just not being worked due to lack of personnel to work them. There is no long, meandering trail. And the current commissioner is just about inadequate as any I have seen in my 30-plus years with SSA. He will have to produce a drastic turn-around just to get back to even before he leaves. Forget about leaving the agency better off. I see massive backlogs getting worse every single day. That is not an improvement.
Well, it is obvious which of the previous two commentors is actually well informed and which is drinking the union Kool-aid....
well said number three.
I'll say this,as a claimant,if accurate analysis,evidence gathering occurred at dds.Social security adjudication at othr levels would be alot easier,and possibly cheaper.
If the letter was received the next day, odds are pretty good the decision was already meandering through payment.
I like some of the changes going on. Greater reliance on staff lawyers to get the easy to pay cases that DDS didn't pay out of the stream waiting for an ALJ is a big deal. Going all-electronic so senior attorneys can be work cases out of their region to help catch up the most-backlogged areas is a nice improvement as well.
More overtime, better allocated would help as well. There are paralegel and attorney writers who haven't hit 100% productivity index in years gobbling up overtime hours and case techs who turn few cases in same boat. Produce and get OT, don't and you won't.
Talking to others a big problem now is that at many offices where more humans are needed to work cases there is simply no place to put them. More than one office has had to turn down new positions because they have no place to put the people.
Anon # 2 and # 6 know what is really going on. anon # 3 and# 4 are apparently management apologists/hacks who are blind to reality. Frustrating as heck to have to deal with folks like that who can't or won't see the reality in front of their faces. They make a bad situation even worse. To anon # 5, hope you see why things aren't improving now.
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