The Social Security Law Section of the Federal Bar Association has posted its Winter 2016 newsletter. There is an article on the "Reserved to the Commissioner" defense that the Social Security Administration tries to use to avoid the treating physician rule and a very interesting article on suicides among Social Security disability claimants.
13 comments:
I've worked disability for five years, and I've had maybe 3,000 total clients. Of those, I've had 6 suicides and 1 murder-suicide. Most of these suicides have been after a Recon denial and after I've told them the wait time to get a hearing. I've had about twice that number die of their disabling conditions, mostly at the Hearing Pending phase.
Does my experience match others out there?
Julia Mariani's article should be required reading for every new ALJ. Excellent.
@8:49, Actually, given your data, you may on the low side. Except for a brief time from 2009-2011, I haven't really counted the number of cases handled to make a statistical analysis. I'm a sole practitioner in a semi-rural area, and my total caseload has been much lower--probably 150-200 active cases at any one time. But, in 2010 (a peak year for numbers and the backlog), 5% of my clients died before they got to their hearings. For several years running, about 50% of my clients who were paying mortgages suffered foreclosures and lost their homes. The sad thing is that the vast majority of these claimants were granted benefits but received them too late.
I don't have any data on the significant number of my clients who are "couch surfers" or who have been taken in by relatives or friends after becoming homeless. It is something that people don't want to talk about, but a significant number of my female clients are living with men and providing sexual favors to have a roof over their heads.
I have no data on the number of suicides. Over 26 years, I've had a large number of clients whose deaths took place under suspicious circumstances--nothing like hangings or gunshots, but mostly overdoses, or diabetics or others who may have just stopped taking medications.
Almost every year, I have at least 1-2 cases in which the claimant has been granted benefits and died prior to receiving them.
If this country had a decent healthcare delivery system, I suspect that most of these deaths would have been avoided, despite the other abysmal conditions in which my often destitute clients have to live. No, North Carolina does not have extended Medicaid and probably never will.
In the last comment, I forgot to mention that I'm moving toward retirement, and I've turned most of my caseload over to a younger colleague. Before decreasing the caseload, I had perhaps 100-150 pending case. At the moment, I still have 18 cases, most of which are awaiting denials by the Appeals Council. Two (2) of the remaining cases are people who died prior to their hearings.
Want to eliminate suicides? INVESTIGATE THE INITIAL LEVEL!!!!!!
Why are so many legitimate claims being denied at this level? Any DDS employees reading, please chime in...
When one considers that Social Security disability claimants are comprised of some of our neediest and poorest citizens, with chronic pain, failed medical interventions, mental illness (with some who already harm themselves and have tried suicide before), and/or drug and alcohol addiction, it's not surprising that this group would have a fair number of suicides compared to the population at large. However, we should be careful not to blame SSA for these suicides, individually or collectively. Seems irresponsible and wrong to imply or infer that a denied claim or the wait for a decision leads to claimant suicide, as if SSA bears responsibility for it. SSA, if informed of a suicidal individual, treats the case as critical and expedites the claim ahead of other claimants. Suicide is a self-inflicted act. There are many reasons why someone could commit suicide, and we don't and can't always know why. Only the individual who commits the act knows why and is ultimately responsible for his/her own death.
11:36 PM Go ahead, wash your hands of it!
You apparently don't understand the hopelessness that creeps after months that become years of waiting. Your told by DDS that your only partially credible because your doctor didn't SPELL it out for them! You get more medical appointments, hoping your doctors will put HALF of what you tell them into your records. You ask, no BEG, your doctors to fill out a RFC form for you. They give you excuses why they can't, but you realize it's all about CYA. The doctors do it and this website is full of CYA comments and blaiming someone else for SSA's problems. Calling a Senator doesn't seem to help much, either. Twenty-one months since I was last able to work with no end in sight. I was able to work only 11 months of the previous 27 months. I have studied my records and I'm confident that people have been convicted of murder on less evidence!
AMEN,TIM!!!!!!
11:36PM, you are apparently an uncompassionate DDS worker! Claimants and Reps do enough, NOW DO YOUR JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I understand the suicide in disability apps- it's like living the lowest of all life.
I love this section from Julia Mariani's article on the Social Security claimants' Catch-22: "As such, having a disability negatively impacts a person's ability to work, which will cause him or her to lose health insurance, and to have diminished funds with which to pay for medical care out-of-pocket, and so will have little or no access to health care, and then will not be able to document the disabling impairment with medical records, and then cannot prove the disability."
It is high time for ALJs to stop finding a lack of medical records to be a credibility problem, when we still tie normal health insurance to employment. Nobody who has been forced to obtain health care in an ER or free clinic would pretend that they could prove anything with those records.
Wait, what?? Are you saying Obamacare is a failure? Wasn't it supposed to make sure everyone had healthcare insurance? Did I read something wrong?
Like any law passed, the modified "Romneycare" had many, many compromises, including many concessions to the insurance industry. Because so many in this country hate Obama more than they desire to see the country's problems solved, there have been few REAL attempts to work out the kinks in the law--the total effort on the opposite side of the aisle in Congress (now 50 times) has been to KILL the program with absolutely NO PROPOSAL of an alternative, other than if you get sick, die quickly. In Massachusetts, 98% of the populace now has coverage. If the modified "Romneycare" was reformed, or if Extended Medicaid (which was part of the original plan) had uniform acceptance, many of the problems would not exist.
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