The Social Security Advisory Board has issued a 130 page document titled Aspects of Disability: Decision Making: Data and Materials. It is filled with charts which one can use to make many different points. I'll post several but let's start out with this one. You can make a lot of different points based just upon this chart alone but one you cannot easily make is that it has become less difficult to get on Social Security disability benefits in recent years. Hearing allowance rates went up slightly but only because allowance rates went down at lower levels. Recently, all allowance rates have gone down a bit.
The difference at the hearing level between dispositions and decisions is the cases dismissed for technical reasons such as filing the request for hearing too late or failing to appear for a hearing.
Well, it appears that the new SSA atorneys that have become ALJ's have decided not to "pay down" the back log as everyone feared. Although it could also be that the claimant's are not as disabled as they and their Reps' are alleging now?? Of course these figures do not take into account the various other programs that are paying more cases, senior attorney, voluntary remand, etc, etc. Less favorable cases appearing before the ALJ.
ReplyDeletea 70% average pay rate is just outrageous..,
ReplyDeleteThe ALJs are a freaking joke. Being unable, unwilling, or unqualified to get a job does not make you disabled!
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 10:57, the report specifically states it includes all dispositions that reach the hearing level, including senior attorney allowances. Did you actually look at the report before commenting?
ReplyDeleteNo, of course he/she didn't look at the report. Might muddle his/her preconceptions, which are clearly very firmly in place.
ReplyDeleteActually, perhaps she was too busy reviewing files for hearings to read another 130 page document..
ReplyDeleteCharles, do you believe that the significantly larger number of applicants since the recession began are disabled at the same rates as the pool of applicants before the recession? Did a multitude of disabling conditions magically appear at the same time as the financial collapse and shedding of jobs?
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't have the exact data, I think we can agree on one assumption: in a bad economy, more people apply for disability, and this increase is in large part people who are not actually disabled.
From this data-backed and hard-to-argue assumption, the following conclusion can be drawn:
a similar allowance rate for this larger, less-concentrated-with-actually-disabled-people, suggests that more allowances to non-disabled people are being made if one assumes that all other things (the regs, the other actually disabled claimants, etc.) remain constant.