The aftermath of my wife’s accident almost six years ago has been a most…educational process. For example, we learned (the hard way) to not count the availability of Social Security disability benefits, even though my wife had been paying the premiums (via taxes) for years. So, this article in the New York Times strikes a chord with me:
Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.
But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits for those judged unable to work or who face terminal illness.
The agency’s new plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to whittle down the backlog, which has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000, will require $100 million more than the president requested this year and still more in the future. The plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations.
There are 1,025 judges currently at work, and the wait for an appeals hearing averages more than 500 days, compared with 258 in 2000. Without new hirings, federal officials predict even longer waits and more of the personal tragedies that can result from years of painful uncertainty.
In my wife’s case, it took two appeals, and signing over 25% of the back payments to a lawyer to get disability benefits started 62 months after that driver scrambled her brain.
It could be worse, I suppose. For example, a few months ago, we finally got a trial date in the lawsuit associated with the accident. The trial will come not quite 80 months after the accident.
Thankfully, we were able to adapt to being a one income family, and fortunately actuarial employers tend to have pretty good health insurance. However, I can definitely empathize with those who were the sole breadwinner prior to their disability.
My wife’s disability attorney mentioned that the SSDI bureaucracy isn’t quite as bad as all the above would suggest—the bureaucracy is set up to move the “visibly disabled”, or folks for whom it seems obvious to a casual observer will be disabled until retirement age. Where the system breaks down is in the bureaucracy involved in differentiating the folks pretending disability to get free money from those whose long-term disability is less obvious (i.e., younger victims or those with “invisible” conditions).
While I do regularly profess a desire that Congress be deadlocked to avoid engaging in real mischief…there are times that inaction in the District is annoying. The playing of politics while the resolution of an identified resource need is sidelined troubles me.
Of course, despite the implications of the NYT article, I’m not sure that simply throwing more judges at the backlog is the issue. You’d think that something could be done about the initial triage process, to reduce the number of cases entering the formal appeal queue.