One employee, with minor hearing problems, was unable to find employment after almost a year of searching. Jobs remained elusive even after becoming less selective and considering positions well below her skill set and abilities. With no job on the horizon and unemployment benefits ending, she applied for Social Security Disability Benefits.

This progression from unemployment to social security disability benefits is becoming more common, as confirmed through a recent study by the White House.

a href=”http://uspolitics.einnews.com/247pr/258377″> See full story here:

Share this article with

Sue Sherman, the subject of a June 2010 story in The Oregonian about her quiet effort to raise awareness about the Medicare waiting period for Social Security disability recipients, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. She qualified quickly under compassionate allowances for Social Security Disability Income in 2009, then learned of the two-year wait to enroll in Medicare — a gap instituted in 1972 to keep costs down, avoid overlaps with private insurance and to preserve Medicare for those with severe, long-lasting disabilities.

At least 15,000 Oregonians are among the 1.8 million Americans who must wait two years after obtaining Social Security disability to become eligible for Medicare. The only exceptions to the Medicare wait are for people in end-state renal failure or with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. SHe became eligible for Medicare in October 2012.

Through 2009 and 2010, Sherman contacted politicians and policymakers to point out that many disabled people spend their savings on the medical care necessary just to reach a diagnosis and can no longer get private health insurance.

For at least the past two sessions of Congress, a proposal has come forward to phase out the waiting period over 10 years. But the Congressional Budget Office calculated the measure would cost an average of $10 billion a year, and the proposal went nowhere. See article here:

Share this article with

But in tandem with that decrease, another public benefit has been increasing. Since 2007, some 3.4 million Americans have been added to the list of those receiving Social Security Disability Insurance. SSDI, as it’s know, pays out some $1,000 a month and also gives people access to Medicare and Medicaid.

About 10.6 million Americans now receive SSDI benefits, which has raised new fears that the Social Security Trust Fund may go broke as early as 2017. According to two new studies, many of those new claimants ran out of unemployment benefits before they applied for SSDI. Listen to report here:

Share this article with

One person who died waiting was Dexter E. Penny of District Heights, Md., who applied for disability benefits in February 2009 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. His initial application was denied. Then his first appeal was denied on the grounds that he didn’t provide enough medical records.

Mr. Penny, a mason, approached the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau for help a year after his first application. He couldn’t understand why terminal cancer wouldn’t qualify him for benefits, says his sister, Diane Penny.

Kate Lang, his lawyer, called four hospitals seeking additional records. Mr. Penny’s condition worsened. By September 2010, he was told he had stage-four cancer. Mr. Penny, 50 years old, was nearly broke and dying in the hospital and the agency wanted more accurate documentation to determine whether he was able to work, according to his sister…

Applications for disability benefits are rising sharply because of high unemployment, an aging population and a combination of mismanagement and potential fraud within the system. About 3.3 million people sought benefits in 2011, and at the end of September a record 771,318 were waiting to have their cases heard on appeal by administrative law judges, according to the latest government data.

Both U.S. lawmakers and disability groups have complained about the long waits. The Social Security Administration has set up a program to let some applicants jump to the front of the line. It also has expanded the number of diseases and disorders that merit an immediate review, which include acute leukemia and pancreatic cancer, to 113, from 100.

These moves have reduced the number of applicants dying in line each year, by 20% from its 2009 peak. The backlog, however, has continued to rise.
Full story at this link.

Share this article with

Today’s Wall Street Journal prints a second article critical of a huge national law firm that has drawan fire for its practices. These huge mega firms have slowly grown and now impact not only the system but many earnest small practitioners all over the US. When a lawyer in aplace like tiny Bend Oregon is put out of business by a cowboy from Manhattan it is a sad day. The local and very personal connection of these small firm practitioners has been frayed by the reach of media. That is just known as progress, but it diminishes the personal connection with clients that is the joy of practicing law, to know we truly made a difference in a person’s life. The first thing we say to our clients is that they shouldn’t need a lawyer. But we win most of our cases because we put them together well and screened out malingerers before I started. And we know the staff in the offices we deal with all the time.

Beyond that, Binder deeply annoys judges and doctors, to a point that it may impact the way their clients are treated. Here is the story:

Share this article with

“Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program financed by payroll taxes on workers and employers. When its revenues fall short of the benefits it owes in a given year, it covers payments by drawing on a $2.6 trillion fund that is accounted for separately from the federal budget and invested in government bonds. It is estimated that unless changes are made to the system, the fund will be able to pay full benefits until the surplus is exhausted in 2036, and about three quarters of benefits after that….”
See full article here:

Share this article with

…”Their research found that close to 10% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 65 who didn’t have access to at least $5,000 applied for Social Security disability benefits by the time their unemployment benefits were set to expire. The percent of this group seeking the benefits rose precipitously in the weeks leading up to the exhaustion of benefits, as it was below 1% with 50 weeks left in unemployment benefits.

“Jobless Americans in this age range who had access to at least $5,000 were much less likely to seek SSDI benefits at any point while collecting unemployment benefits.

“There has long been a relationship between unemployment rates and applications for disability benefits, with more Americans seeking entry into the program when it’s harder to find a job.” See full story here:

Share this article with

“A focus of the study is expected to be the work of roughly 1,500 administrative-law judges, who hear appeals by applicants but whose award rates vary widely.

“Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration next week plans to stop notifying people applying for benefits of which judge they’ve been assigned for their case. This is being done, someone briefed on the plan said, to prevent applicants and their lawyers from trying to shop their appeals to the most lenient judges. ”

Advocates complain that this will prevent them from preparing in the way a particular judge wants to see a case presented. Each judge handles hearings differently, some want briefs, some don’t. Some do all the questioning, some want lawyers to do it. Lawyers say that after waiting several years for a hearing, forum shopping is off the table.

Share this article with

The Social Security disability program started in 1957 as a way to help people who can’t work because of health problems. There has been a surge of applicants to the program over the last decade. There were 6.6 million beneficiaries in 2000. By 2009, there were 9.6 million.

The average monthly benefit in 2009 was $1,064.

Currently, the disability fund is kept separate from retirement benefits and has a much smaller cushion of reserves.

Disability payments are concentrated in counties where the jobs require manual labor and where unemployment is traditionally high. Mining and timbering are major industries in many of the counties with the highest percentages of disability beneficiaries. These are also counties with historically high rates of unemployment.

Here is a list of the 50 counties in the country with the highest percentages of working age adults receiving Social Security disability benefits in 2009. Only three of the 50 are urban counties. Five contain small cities. The other 42 of the top 50 are rural. Read on:

Share this article with

Beginning this month, Social Security has facilitated applications for disability and retirement benefits in Spanish at the new site: www.segurosocial.gov.

Share this article with