From a television station in Indianapolis:
An Indianapolis man says he’s taken to the streets to panhandle because his application for disability requires him to wait almost two years for help.Richard Frizzle underwent heart surgery in April 2017 and applied for disability that August. Ten months later, Frizzle is still awaiting approval. With no income and no idea whether he’ll get disability, Frizzle has turned to panhandling. ...
Call 6 Investigates confirmed that Richard Frizzle filled out his paperwork for federal disability benefits on August 8, 2017. But the Chicago office of Social Security Administration says the average wait time for a hearing in Indianapolis is 19 months. ...
15 comments:
Who cares about the surplus population. Let him die out there. This society is for the smart and the fit. He should have gone to Wharton and gotten an MBA and be running a hedge fund. Screw him. He's probably faking anyway I bet he never even had heart surgery. He's probably got his new F-150 parked just around the corner. I know a guy down the street from my cousin Cletus who gets this free money and he's not even disabled. He just acts crazy and has a steel plate in his head. The TV should have followed him longer and got the real story. Fake news.
I have thought about this... often. I would need a recliner... I definitely could not sit long (15-20 min) in a lawn chair. It was been 4 1/2 years since I was last able to work and 6 1/2 since I could work consistently! I suffered much in order to work for over 25 years before that. Frankly, it makes it really hard to care about those whining about "working" conditions of people earning 6 figures... I could be an ALJ. Just claim the claimant "isn't entirely credible," get the VE to "find" a couple of "jobs" they could do...
I think a lot of these problems could be solved if the Agency got smart about the process and stopped thinking it can fix the backlog by rushing employees. Get rid of recon and give the people at initial more time to actually gather evidence and make a good decision. Maybe fewer deserving cases will be just pushed to the hearing level so that people can make their numbers.
Getting rid of recon will not alter how initial cases are handled. The DDS will only make a decision at initial once they have enough information in file. Also, getting rid of recon would get rid of a quick fix should a disabled claimant slip through the cracks and get denied at initial. A lot of people assume that recon is simply a "rubber stamp," but about 10% of recon cases get reversed. As for the gentleman who is panhandling, my understanding is that Indiana is a recon state, so his case would have already been reviewed twice and found not to meet SSA standards for disability. Yes, judges apply a wide swath of degrees of their own standards, so it's possible he could get allowed by an ALJ...but initial cases get decided within about an average of 3 months, and those who meet the disability standards of SSA will usually get allowed within that timeframe (about 25% of those who apply).
Panhandling, eh? Sounds to me like he can engage in SGA!
12:05 Texting, hun? Sounds like you must be Hemingway.
Aside fromm the sarcastic remarks, the truth is that this is very sad. People who are disabled are, in fact, disabled. There is a difference between standing on a street corner holding up a cup and actually being able to work a job which requires you to pretty much never be sick, always be on time, interact with people, follow instructions, concentrate 110%...it is not easy for people with medical issues which are serious. This is no joke; I am lucky as I was approved relatively quickly over a decade ago even though I had to appeal the initial decision, which by the way was corrupt unto itself. The medical person explained to me that he would call the police without hesitation if I said anything questionable and have me committed and so, out of fear for my life, I told him what he wanted to hear. On the second examination I simply told the truth, which was easy because the medical examiner was fair and respectful and actually wanted to hear what I had to say (he never threatened me)......So, aside from the backlog, I sincerely believe there is some corruption as I was coerced into complacency.
What terrible reporting. The story is painted to make it seem like he filed in August 2017 and won't get an answer until 2019. He's in Indiana. He's gotten two answers already.
And yes, clearly he's disabled. He had heart surgery and filed an application. Pretty sure that meets a listing.
I wish just once one of these articles would say what the actual criteria for specific disabilities are and then have a discussion as to whether or not they are reasonable
There is a case out there that says panhandling can be SGA depending on how it is performed. I don't recall the name offhand.
One of the most famous Sherlock Holmes short stories, which Stephen King later updated, are about able bodied men who switch careers to go into panhandling because it's more lucrative than their past relevant "honest" work... Though not so much in 21st century America where nobody carries cash anymore.
@6:58PM There's this case but it addresses stealing as SGA more so than panhandling: https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/rulings/di/03/SSR94-01-di-03.html
There is a great difference between chronic medical condition and disability.
"I wish just once one of these articles would say what the actual criteria for specific disabilities are and then have a discussion as to whether or not they are reasonable."
This is a great question. I work as a DDS examiner, and this gets complicated very fast. Obviously, anyone who is found to meet listing level severity will be found disabled. These listings and specific criteria are spelled out and are well publicized. Where things get complicated are when we assign RFCs (sedentary, light and medium). The DDS has pretty rigorous standards here (more rigorous than most disability attorneys I imagine would like), and these are pretty uniform across all DDSs due to a rigorous federal review process that ensures we are all following uniform standards. When someone has a heart condition, we're paying close attention to their ejection fraction, labored breathing, edema or other significant objective residual issues, which depending on the severity could be a sedentary or light. Sometimes there are very minimal residual issues after a heart attack or surgery (found in the objective findings) and that's more likely to get a medium. There's a lot of nuance, particularly since there are so many different kinds of medical conditions. It's as much an art as a science, and it takes at least a year working hundreds of cases to get a good feel for the difference between a sedentary, light and medium. Even then, reasonable minds can differ between particular borderline RFCs. Once we figure an RFC, if a claimant is over 50 or 55, then things become even more messy as we figure out the ability to perform past work and if a claimant has skills that are transferable (many of the DDSs tended to be pretty relaxed on transferability to the benefit of the claimant, but SSA has tightened things up, starting around 2015, to make these things more policy compliant). If a claimant is under 50, in the vast majority of cases, they will need to meet or equal a listing.
Once a case gets to an ALJ, the standards look a lot different. ALJs do not have as much of a rigorous review process and they have much greater latitude to apply their own standards. Excluding cases that are dismissed due to withdrawal, ALJs nation-wide approve about 50% of the cases before them. The vast majority of these cases fall well short of DDS standards of disability. Since each judge applies things differently, it's impossible to spell out a single criteria for which they look at impairments.
If someone has a stroke or a heart attack, DDS is required to wait three months and obtain an evaluation three months after the event. If the person has a stent, bypass or other procedure, then we have to wait three months after that. So to argue that DDS does not take enough time to make a determination is not really valid.
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