Social Security has posted numbers through the end of 2018 for disability claims filed and approved. The number of claims received for adjudication in 2018 was 1,300,668. This was down from 1,377,803 in 2017 and 1,926,398 in 2010 when the peak occurred. The number of claims approved in 2018 was 733,879, down from 762,141 in 2017 and 1,052,551 in the peak year of 2010. The number of people in current benefit payment status was 8,537,332, which was down from 8,695,475 at the end of 2017 and 8,954,518 in 2014 at the peak.
12 comments:
Wow, with all of the rep whining about how SSA is disapproving more claims at the direction of those up top or in conjunction with the Huntington scandal, let's look at the data....
Percentage of total apps approved in 2018: 56.4%
Percentage of total apps approved in 2017: 55.3%
Percentage of total apps approved in 2010: 54.6%
Interestingly, mean old SSA had its second-highest approval rate of initial applications in the last 15 years in 2018. I do realize that there was a sort of bottoming out from 2013 to 2016, but you'd think that if SSA were directing employees and judges to deny more cases (as is regularly alleged by posters here), you wouldn't have the bounce back to the normal average in '17 and '18.
It wasn't that long ago that the new darling of the Federal Reserve, Mary Daly, and her pals Autor and Dugan, were running around yelling that the sky was falling. They were so wrong then. What are they screwing up now?
Shhhh...it is like talking to a trump supporter, they don't like the facts, give them a conspiracy. Here, watch...
The Deep State is focusing on other things at the time and control of the secret message system was changed due to postings alluding to its existence on blogs throughout the US.
5:51: the "whining" you claim you hear from reps is from the drop in ALJ pay rates, not the initial applications. These lower ALJ pay rates are well documented. While SSA has reined in the outliers on the high pay scale, the outliers on the low pay scale continue to cause great damage to the otherwise deserving claimants they repeatedly deny. This is the issue that reps continue to "whine" about.
The current rise in initial app pay rate makes sense. Back during the financial crash, many people lost their jobs and applied for SSD because they had no other options. Many of these folks did not meet the disability criteria, but rolled the dice with disability because they had no other means of steady income. These same folks in a better economy are now working and not forced to turning to the disability rolls.
I'm seeing more approvals with the onset date radically amended so that statistically it shows as an approval, but there was not retroactive benefits (and nothing from which to pay the representative).
I've never once been encourage to approve or disapprove claims in the specific or in the general.
I've had the occasional email asking me to move cases along because they are getting stale in their current status.
My observation is fewer claims are half court heaves, tossing the ball up on the prayer it goes in.
@5:51
Claims awarded at initial application are awarded in large part not due to extensive efforts by a representative, but due to historical systems meant to quickly award claims which are likely to win out in the end (medical-vocational guidelines, listings, compassionate allowances, etc.) That's not to say good representatives do not ensure these systems are applied in every case, they do, but representation is more complex as claims proceed, and if a claim is awarded early, it generally is due to obvious factors which satisfies SSA's criteria on its face.
As to why SSA higher-ups' actions have not been ordering a reduction in early awards, I do not agree with this claim as the overall reduced award rate appears to be based on under-staffing more than anything in combination with the public's (ALJs included) erroneous perception that the disability system is full of fraud and/or benefits are easily awarded, not a result of direct interference.
10:31 telling the truth there!!!!
@9:29
There isn't a big rise in initial approvals. The initial and recon allowance rates have remained rather consistent over the years... Around a third of all initial applications are approved and just over 10% of recon cases. Those haven't had wild fluctuations over the last 15 years.
The numbers provided are for the percentage of all initial applications approved at all levels. If there were downward pressure or a big dip in ALJ approval rates, as is often alleged here, the overall percentage of approved applications would not be increasing.
I do agree with your second point as one of the main reasons for the overall increase.
11:58 that's just flat wrong and so is anyone else out there who doesn't know how to do simple math. The "waterfall chart" from 2010 showed the ALJ approvals were at 62%. In 2012 that rate was down to 52%. 2018 showed ALJ approvals were at 47%. Math tells us the ALJ approval rate has fell 15% in a matter of 8 years. 15% decrease in approvals in a system where ALJs adjudicate 600,000 claims is a ton of claims year in and year out that only a few years ago.
So, I really do not care about this whole overall approval rate argument. All I know is ALJs are paying 15% less claims from 2010 to 2018. Math tells me that.
5:38 - I'm not sure what your point is. By your argument, if in 2019 DDS paid 100% of the claims, and therefore ALJs paid 0% of the claims, your argument would seem to be that something is amiss because ALJ approval rates fell 62% from 2010. If overall a higher percentage of claimants are getting benefits approved, I don't think you can look at one slice of that approval timeline and claim that it tells the whole story.
In any case, because of the way the actuaries calculate the award rate, we'll probably continue to see the percentage go up. As footnote "d" explains, the award ratio is for claims paid versus applications in "the same time period." The number of applications is going down, but it sometimes takes over a year to grant benefits in a claim. In effect, the chart for award ratios in 2018 encompasses applications filed in 2018 but a subset of awards from 2017 applications that were granted in 2018. Since 2017 had more applications than 2018, this would explain in part an increase in the award rate.
Same thing could be said for a decrease in award ratios in the aftermath of the great recession. A large year-to-year increase in the number of applications would tend to decrease the award ratio for that particular year because you're partially looking at awards granted from applications in the previous (smaller) year.
So this gets complicated unless you adjust all award ratios for the same year that the application was filed, which the chart linked in the above post does not do.
I don't believe the FY2018 data is out yet to add to this list, but something else to consider in looking at the numbers is the percentage of decisions awarded or denied (i.e., dispositions exclusive of dismissals). I couldn't find a clean version of the 2010 chart, but I believe it might've been 62% favorable and 26% unfavorable. So the ALJ approval rates in terms of decisions is as follows:
2010 (62% F/24% U)... 73.8%
2011 (58% F/29% U)... 66.7%
2012 (52% F/32% U)... 61.9%
2013 (48% F/35% U)... 57.8%
2014 (45% F/36% U)... 55.6%
2015 (45% F/37% U)... 54.8%
2016 (46% F/35% U)... 56.7%
2017 (47% F/32% U)... 59.5%
So yes, since the good ol' days of 2005-2011 when quite a bit more than a handful of judges were approving 90+% of thousands of dispositions a year, overall ALJ numbers are still down. The last two years, ALJ approval rates have actually increased consistent with the overall approvals. It's not to the 2010 levels, but if you're expecting that, good luck. The days of Charles Bridges and others like him doing 1800+ with most OTR are long gone.
When is the new waterfall chart slated to come out for FY2018? Curious to see if the ALJ approval rate exclusive of dismissals stays around 60%.
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