Dec 18, 2017

Cleveland Plain Dealer On Hearing Backlog

     The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting on Social Security's horrendous hearing backlog problem. As the article reports "Experts, including disability lawyers, advocates and judges, say the solution is simple: give Social Security enough operating funds to hire sufficient staff to make a dent in the backlogged cases."

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is really a pretty simple math problem. The DDS is allowing a decreasing number of claims: 2010- 45%; 2016- 32%. This decrease has resulted in an increasing number of appeals. Reverse the trend and allow more claims at the DDS level and the number of appeals will decrease and the backlog will shrink. Simple math.

Anonymous said...

1:13 we don't have a sarcastic font, so it is hard to tell if you are being serious or not? Are you truly suggesting they just pay more claims to meet some prior arbitrary percentage? Are you sure everyone that applies meets the requirements of disability?

Anonymous said...

If allowance rates and staffing levels at the DDS were restored to 2o1o levels, the pressure on ODAR would lessened. Also, there is no reason not to give the 17 year Prototype Pilot program a proper burial and bring back the reconsideration level of appeals to the ten states that do not have it.

Anonymous said...

The number of hearing requests has decreased as the number of initial applications has dropped.

Certainly there is more that SSA should do to get accurate decisions at the initial or recon level. It doesn't serve the agency or the claimants well for them to deny someone who should have been awarded benefits. Something like 2% of DDS denials are reviewed and 50% of awards (because the award reviews are required by law). The way SSA pays DDSs does not incentivize them to send people for consultative examinations (CEs often aren't great, but in some cases they can be useful) or to be persistent in getting medical records from providers or even to come to the right decisions. The CARES plan includes a component of "re-remanding" some cases to the state agency when OHO realizes that they were really obvious cases that should have been granted.

There will still be a need for ALJs. There will still be lots of people denied by state agencies. The goal is just to reduce the number of times the DDSs deny people who should have won.

Tim said...

2:37 Are you being sarcastic? Part of this reduction of approvals at ALL levels can be traced back to "think tanks" ,such as the Cato Institute, that claimed that millions of able bodied people were being approved for SSDI/SSI. Senator Coburn's investigation into a man who trimmed his trees, combined with Huntington, gave Congress the excuse to reign in approval rates. SSA called this "quality" in decisions. In practice, it has led to denying anyone they think they can justify. Whether the claimant can actually work, doesn't seem to be the point. I don't know if large numbers of people were given benefits that should not have been. I do know that people like me have been hurt in the overreaction. Apparently, Congress would rather have tens of thousands of people who are disabled left to the mercy of others than allow a few fraudsters. I understand a reasonable attempt to reel in those ALJs who approved most of their cases, but not an unreasonable attempt to deny all you t think you can justify, often with faulty logic and ignoring the evidence.

Anonymous said...

Tim, were you denied at the Initial, Recon and Hearing level?

Anonymous said...

Living in an area serviced by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I have come to expect poor quality, shoddy journalism. This piece is no exception. Absolutely nothing mentioned about the fact that 5/18 judges at the Cleveland OHO grant under 30%, with several in the low 20s. In prior years, some of these judges granted as little as 10 and 12%. Nothing mentioned that Cleveland is an outlier OHO staffed by a disproportionate number of outlier judges.