Social Security has posted year end data on the number of Disability Insurance Benefits claims filed, approved and in payment status through the end of 2015. As of the end of calendar year 2015 the number of claims filed was down 4.3% from 2014. The number of claims approved was also down 4.3%. The number of claimants in current payment status declined by a half percent in 2015. Terminations of benefits increased by 2.95%. The termination rate was up to 8.62%, the highest it's been in at least 15 years.
6 comments:
The Awards percent column is all one needs to look at. In 2001 was 46% and in 2015 it was 32%, with a steady decline in between. There has been no appreciable substantive changes in the law or regulations during that period of time.
I can hear it now, "its better trained Judge's and decision writers being tasked to write more defensible legally sufficient decisions." But this has only been a talking point for the past couple of years, so what accounts for the steady decline over the past 15 years?
note that the overall award rate was consistent between 2014 and 2015.
@ 4/48pm myopic much?
@ Johnny Cash
I am 4:48. I posted in response to Charles's post, which stated: "The number of claims approved was also down 4.3% [in 2015]"
His statement was somewhat misleading and the reason the number of approved claims was down is due to the decreased number of applications, NOT a lower approval rate. In fact, as I noted, the approval rate stayed the same.
Paranoid much?
In REAL numbers, over 2000 fewer awards in 2015 than in 2003, despite 416,000+ more applicants. WHY? Are applicants today being discriminated against because others may have been given the benefit of the doubt in the past?
Many reasons in combination. More and more desperate people applying, who in former times, could have found relatively menial, or physical work to do: Jobs, which have now been out-sourced, factories/mines closed; or now filled by incoming aliens. Then there are vast numbers of parents applying for children who have behavioral problems (often due to poor parenting, by parents who had parents with poor parenting skills), for whom the present school system has no remedy...other than sedation. The list could, not doubt, go on and on....
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