From USA Today:

The Social Security Administration faces a record — and rapidly growing — backlog of appeals by people who claim they are too disabled to work. Through June, it had just over 745,000 cases pending, and the wait for a hearing averaged 17 months, also a record.
Claimants in some parts of the country must wait up to 31 months, according to the agency. “People have died waiting for a hearing,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue says.

Delays can lead to personal havoc. click this link to see the story and link to your area’s backlogs:

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NPR joins the conversation about Social Security’s big backlogs – The Social Security Administration says there is a huge backlog of disability cases, and not enough to staff to handle them. Some claimants are having to wait as long as a year and a half for a ruling. Janet Babin of Marketplace talks with Alex Chadwick.

listen in at this link:

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“It is like a disaster here. We can’t do the work we are getting,” said
Witold Skwierczynski, an officer of the American Federation of Government Employees
who specializes in Social Security field operations.Social Security staffing will have declined by 4,000 positions over two years ending Oct. 1, and the proposed congressional funding should allow the agency to hire 1,000 employees in the next year, Warsinskey said.

In July 25th’s Washington Post, Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said that years of inadequate funding is the cause of staffing and workload
problems. The drop in staffing and budget constraints have led to crowded waiting
rooms and jammed telephone lines at many field offices. For every two field
employees who retire or quit, Social Security replaces one…

But the new hires would make only a small dent in the workload. The agency
has a huge backlog of disability claims, with some applicants waiting three
or four years for decisions, Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) said during a
House floor discussion of Social Security funding.

Employees also have been given extra work by Congress, such as making
Medicare subsidy determinations for prescription drugs and imposing tighter
requirements for obtaining or replacing Social Security cards.

That is on top of the agency’s regular workload. On average, about 850,000
people visit field offices each week, and some wait two to three hours for
help. About 68 million phone calls pour into the field offices each year,
overwhelming employees in thinly staffed offices, Warsinskey said.

Partly because of budget constraints, Social Security is closing field
offices that serve areas with stable or shrinking populations. Offices are
closing in many areas. Link to Post here

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The News Journal of Wilmingham, Delaware provides a clear explanation of what an attorney does in a case:

To participate meaningfully means knowing the complex Social Security regulations and what they require for each subcategory of ailment, considered together with the claimant’s age, education and work experience. As one example, a 50-year-old steel worker with an eighth-grade education might be granted benefits, but a psychologist of the same age and physical problems might be justifiably denied benefits, because the latter’s education and work experience will allow sedentary employment.

Applying the standards then leads the experienced attorney to gather and provide helpful medical, vocational and personal information. The Social Security Administration and the judge will not do so on their own. Read entire thoughtful article on this topic here:

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From The Memphis Commercial Appeal

…approximately 70 percent of applicants are denied at their initial applications for disability. Those not lucky enough to win initially must appeal for reconsideration (where 93 percent of applicants lose) before eventually having to appeal for a hearing before an administrative law judge. In our experience, the initial application and reconsideration each takes about four to five months. Though these delays are annoying, they are nothing new. What is new, however, is the ever-lengthening delay for a hearing.
According to the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, the number of cases pending at the hearing level has risen considerably from 311,958 cases in 1999 to a staggering 711,284 cases in 2005. Concurrently, processing times for these cases have risen around the country. In the year 2000, average processing time was 274 days. Currently, the number hovers at 524 days. In Memphis, the average processing time stands at 450 days, while in Nashville it is 550 days. See full article here:

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Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, today announced that Social Security will publish a proposed regulation to extend the quick disability determination (QDD) process to all State disability determination services. The process now operating in the Boston region utilizes a predictive model that analyzes specific elements of data within the electronic claims file. It identifies claims where there is a high potential that the claimant is disabled and where evidence of the claimant’s allegations can be quickly and easily verified.

“The length of time many people wait for a disability decision is unacceptable,” Astrue said.

See Full story here:

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The Federal Times discusses the long-term mpact of the backlogs:

“Although there are backlogs in many Social Security Administration workloads, the backlogs in disability claims have most captured the attention of the print media. At the hearings level in the disability appeals process, there are nearly three-quarters of a million cases pending. This number represents an increase of more than 135 percent since the beginning of the decade. It is now taking, on average, 523 days for a hearing decision…”
Full Story here:

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The Baltimore Sun Reports:

Legislation has been proposed to help the disability backlogs at both Social Security and the VA. The bill which has 36 co-sponsors, and will allow a veteran who receives a 100 percent disability rating from the VA to receive Social Security benefits quicker than the prolonged waiting period now in place.
Read details here:

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From the July 2 Oregonian in Portland:

Illegal immigrants pump as much as $7 billion in taxes into the Social Security trust fund each year, money that helps pay retirement and disability benefits of U.S. workers. The chances are slim that those undocumented workers will ever see a penny in retirement or other benefits.

The Oregon Center for Public Policy, a group that advocates for low-income people, estimates that illegal immigrants in Oregon pay $56 million to $79 million a year in Social Security taxes.

The question of whether illegal immigrants contribute more in total taxes than they consume in public services has no clear answer, but their contribution may be one reason the nation’s tax system turns a largely blind eye to immigration.
Read full story here:

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About one-third of 20-year-old workers today will become disabled before they hit retirement age at 67, according to the Social Security Administration. And the primary cause of disability is chronic disease — cardiovascular, musculoskeletal problems and cancer are leading diagnoses. Read this article about the value of purchasing private disability insurance while you are young. Full Article from today’s New York Times here:

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