If you had no earned income and no tax liability in 2007, you would get no refund under the existing proposal. However, the Senate is trying to amend the bill so senior citizens living off Social Security could get a refund.
See Kathleen Pender’s Column here:<
The Cleveland Plain Dealer Editoriailzes Today: After nearly four years, Social Security disability applicants can be forgiven for being cynical about the latest pledges to end the backlog that keeps their cases in limbo.
This time, however, there is a ray of hope that the reforms will work. The Social Security Administration has a bigger budget from Congress and a newly rediscovered sense of urgency about the plight of the 14,090 applicants in Northeast Ohio who have been waiting for months, in some cases years, for a resolution.
The delays are inexcusable. They heap bureaucratic agony on once-proud working people laid low by crippling diseases or accidents. Some people lost their homes, their medical insurance or their very lives before a judge awarded them a disability payment. Read editorial under this link:
The Social Security Administration is making progress in reducing its backlog of disability claims, but without more resources, it will like fall further behind as aging boomers overwhelm the system, Comptroller General David Walker said.
SSA needs more funding from Congress and it needs to hire more staff, Walker said.
“There are serious fundamental and systematic problems. We need to change the pipeline, not just the tail end. We need to look at the flow,†he said. See full article here:
CBS reports: “It’s a very tough standard,” said Michael Astrue, commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “And you can argue whether that should be the standard or not, but I’m stuck with that.”
A two-month CBS News Investigation uncovered a system whose own standards have been called into question – a federal agency reeling from budget cuts and high staff turnover. Doctors making decisions outside their specialties, and inexperienced examiners under pressure to keep costs down.
“We’re failing the disabled on a very large scale,” said Trisha Cardillo, who worked inside the system for years, reviewing 200 federal disability cases a month in Ohio. Click here for full story or video:
Disability Pay Rejections
A two-month CBS News investigation has revealed that many individuals who are disabled are either being rejected or waiting years for a decision on benefits. Armen Keteyian reports. CBS found that 16,000 people have died waiting for disability during the past three years.
Click here to see the video:
He laments that he would have been able to keep the house had he received monthly checks from Social Security Disability Insurance.
He first applied four years ago, then applied again, then again through a hearing, then through an appeal.
His is one of 26,820 disability cases that are pending in Indiana — and more than 700,000 nationwide — that are caught in agonizing delays, a backlog that the Social Security Administration says has mushroomed.
Boomer impact
The Social Security Administration blames it on the rising number of people seeking disability benefits, driven by baby boomers who are 50-plus, an age more prone to disabling conditions. Also, it argues that Congress has been cutting the agency’s funds short, which means that staffing levels haven’t been this low since 1972. See article here:
A New York Times Editorial today reports that thousands of elderly and disabled refugees who have found safety in the United States in recent years may soon find out just how cold and equivocal America’s welcome can be. These vulnerable newcomers are subject to a federal law that cuts off their disability benefits if they do not become citizens within seven years. Many came as disabled victims of violence in their native countries, now they are victims of the hapless INS, which is woefully behind in processing citizenship applications since 9/11 imposed increased security. Refugees await decisons that may come too late to rescue their incomes. See Editorial here:
The New York TImes Reports: The Bush administration is imposing restrictions on the ability of states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, in an effort to prevent them from offering coverage to families of modest incomes who, the administration argues, may have access to private health insurance.The restrictions mirror those the administration placed on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program in August after states tried to broaden eligibility for it as well.
Until now, states had generally been free to set their own Medicaid eligibility criteria, and the Bush administration had not openly declared that it would apply the August directive to Medicaid. State officials in Louisiana, Ohio and Oklahoma said they had discovered the administration’s intent in negotiations with the federal government over the last few weeks. See full article here:
Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows promise, according to a pilot study in the November issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The study found that 25 percent of U.S. military personnel assigned to an Internet-based, eight-week program of self-management CBT no longer had PTSD diagnosis after treatment or at six-month follow-up, compared to 5 percent after treatment and 3 percent at six-month follow-up for those assigned to regular supportive counseling.
See full article here: