One of the more popular articles in Tuesday’s New York Times was an article entitled, “Insurers Faulted as Overloading Social Security”.
The Social Security system is choking on paperwork and spending millions of dollars a year screening dubious applications for disability benefits, according to lawsuits filed by whistle-blowers.
Insurance companies are the source of the problem, the lawsuits say. The insurers are forcing many people who file disability claims with them to also apply to Social Security — even people who clearly do not qualify for the government program.[...]
[D]isability insurers tell many of their claimants to appeal Social Security’s rejections again and again, until some are finally accepted. Then the insurers can take those people off their rolls, shifting the cost to the government.
I have the misfortune to have experience on both sides of the subject here. One of the programs I work with in the day job offers LTD cover. Also, my wife was disabled in a car accident six years ago. Last year, we finished a 3-year struggle to get Social Security to recognize her disability (after signing away a large chunk of her back benefits check to get a lawyer to represent us).
I’m rather disappointed in the one-sidedness of the NYT article.
Whether the aggressiveness of some LTD providers in encouraging claimants to pursue SSDI claims is deliberate manipulation of the system, or just a reflection of the random nature of the Social Security disability determination process, I cannot say.
I can support the idea that the Social Security claims intake process is painfully slow and overloaded. Some of that is clearly lack of resource on Social Security’s part, and some of that is probably a large number of applications from ineligible claimants which Social Security is required by law to give appropriate consideration to.
However, a fair amount of the burden on Social Security disability also has to be it’s random nature. With my wife’s claim, we encountered some of the most idiotic denials, and had to permit poking-and-prodding by doctors who didn’t normally specialize in my wife’s ailments. In fact, when we were in the process, the guidance we were given was “grin and bear it” through the random rejections of initial application and request for reconsideration, so that we could get into the long queue to go before an ALJ who would actually give consideration to my wife’s condition.
There has to be a more efficient, reasonable way to screen SSDI applicants. The current bureaucratic mess has also got to be a significant drain on the system.
If Social Security disability applications could be processed more efficiently, more reasonably, and with more predictable results (other than a presumption of “deny twice, and let a judge handle it the rest of the way”), presumably the “get back in line and try again, until you get a favorable answer” strategy that LTD insurers are alleged to pursue wouldn’t be needed.
