[nfb-talk] FW: [CCB-L] Disability Cases Last Longer as Backlog Rises

[Eric Calhoun]

Original Message: 
From: "Ardis Bazyn" <abazyn at bazyncommunications.com>
To: <CCB-L at googlegroups.com>, "blind students of California"
<California-BlindStudents at googlegroups.com>
Subject: [CCB-L] Disability Cases Last Longer as Backlog Rises
Date: 
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:11:01 -0800


December 10, 2007

Disability Cases Last Longer as Backlog Rises

By

ERIK ECKHOLM

RALEIGH, N.C. - Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social
Security

disability

 claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory,
now waiting as long as three years for a decision.

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.

Progress against the backlog, if it happens, cannot undo the three years
that Belinda Virgil of Fayetteville, N.C., has worried about her future
since her

initial application was turned down.

Tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day because of

emphysema

 and life-threatening

sleep apnea

, Ms. Virgil lost her apartment and has alternated between a sofa in her
daughter's crowded house and a friend's place as she waits for an answer
to
her

appeal.

"It's been hell," said Ms. Virgil, 44, who finally got her hearing in
November and is awaiting the outcome. "I've got no money for Christmas, I
move from

house to house, and I'm getting really depressed."

The disability process is complex, and the standard for approval has,
from
the inception of the program in the 1950s, been intentionally strict to
prevent

malingering and drains on the treasury. But it is also inevitably
subjective
in some cases, like those involving mental illness or pain that cannot be

tested.

In a standard tougher than those of most private plans, recipients must
prove that because of physical or mental disabilities they are unable to
do
"any

kind of substantial work" for at least 12 months - if an engineer could
not
do his job but could work as a clerk, he would not qualify - or prove
that

an illness is expected "to result in death."

In a recent interview, the commissioner of Social Security, Michael J.
Astrue, said that outright fraud was rare but that many cases on appeal
were
borderline.

In addition, widely publicized charges in the 1970s that money had been
wasted on recipients whose conditions improved led to tighter scrutiny.

Of the roughly 2.5 million disability applicants each year now, about
two-thirds are turned down initially by state agencies, which make
decisions
with

federal oversight based on paper records but no face-to-face interview.
Most
of those who are refused give up at that point or after a failed request
for

local reconsideration.

But of the more than 575,000 who go on to file appeals - putting them in
the
vast line for a hearing before a special federal judge - two-thirds
eventually

win a reversal.

Mr. Astrue and other officials attribute the high number of reversals to
several causes. Those who file appeals tend to be those with stronger
cases
and

lawyers who help them gather persuasive medical data. During the extended
waiting period, a person's condition may worsen, strengthening the case.
The

judges see applicants in person and have more discretion to grant
benefits
in borderline cases.

Requiring face-to-face interviews at the initial stage could reduce the
number of appeals, Mr. Astrue said, "but given the huge volume of cases
coming through,

it would be incredibly costly, and the Congress is not willing to fund
that."

The growing delays in the appeal process over the last decade resulted in
part from litigation and financing shortages that prevented the hiring of
new

administrative law judges. In addition, the number of applications is
rising
as baby boomers reach their 50s and 60s.

"Once the system got overloaded, it fell farther and farther behind,"
said
Rick Warsinskey, legislative director of the National Council of Social
Security

Management Associations, which represents managers from the agency.

If approved, those who have paid into Social Security receive income
comparable to retirement benefits, averaging more than $1,000 a month and
potentially

more. The poor, and severely disabled children, receive Supplemental
Security Income checks that will be $637 a month in 2008.

Charles T. Hall's law firm in Raleigh has the state's largest disability
practice, with six lawyers representing some 2,500 clients, usually
working
on

contingency and collecting 25 percent of back payments, to a limit of
$5,300. Mr. Hall said that about one client a month died while awaiting a
hearing.

Far more clients, he said, run out of money and are evicted from rental
units or lose their homes.

In the past, said Walter Patterson, a disability lawyer in Statesboro,
N.C.,
clients who received a foreclosure warning were pushed up the waiting
list

for quicker hearings. But as the hearing offices have become overwhelmed,
he
said, they now expedite cases only after seeing an actual eviction notice

- usually too late to help.

Thomas Airington, 48, who formerly ran a car-emissions testing business,
was
told his appeal, filed last spring, would be expedited when he showed
officials

an eviction notice. In the meantime he lost the house, which his parents
had
bequeathed him. A hearing date has still not been set.

"If I'd been approved in time, I could have saved my house," said Mr.
Airington, who is staying with a brother near Raleigh.

Mr. Airington has pins in his spine from a car accident in 1992,
shattered a
knee when he fell 30 feet in 2005, has nerve damage in his feet and
chronic

arthritis

 and

depression

. The rejection letter he is appealing said, "We have determined that the
condition is not severe enough to preclude work."

Mr. Airington said he tried a desk job but found he could not sit for
long,
and tried working as a stocker in a grocery store but could not reach for
shelves.

Whatever the outcome, he, like many applicants, is in limbo while he
waits.

The extended delays can also mean extra burdens for state welfare
agencies.
In New York State, about half the 38,000 people now waiting on disability
appeals,

for an average of 21 months, are receiving cash assistance from the
state,
said Michael Hayes, spokesman for the Office of Temporary and Disability
Assistance.

Mr. Astrue, the latest of several Social Security commissioners to
promise
speedier decisions, said the agency had already taken steps to ensure
quicker

initial approval for those most clearly eligible and was holding more
hearings by video.

But by all accounts, a major increase in money, judges and support staff
will be needed to have a significant impact.

Mr. Astrue said that if the budget impasse continued for too long,
leaving
the agency budget at its current level, "not only will we not do any
hiring,

we're looking at furloughs."

A first step of raising the number of judges to 1,200 will require at
least
$100 million extra for the agency beyond the $9.6 billion that President
Bush

has proposed for the 2008 fiscal year, Mr. Astrue said. Within a
wide-ranging, $151 billion health, education and labor bill passed in
November, the Democratic-controlled

Congress voted for a $275 million increase for the agency. But Mr. Bush
vetoed the bill, calling it profligate.

If the stalemate continues, the government will probably operate on the
basis of continuing resolutions, which will keep agency spending at last
year's

level and doom the plan to add judges.

Richard and Vicki Wild and their adult son Mark, of Hillsborough, N.C.,
were
mystified that Mark's case would ever require a judge.

Hospitalized with increasing frequency since his severe

diabetes

 was discovered at age 19, when he was found unconscious in a bus
station,
Mark Wild was eager to work as a chef. But over 15 years, he tried and
lost
jobs

as a waiter and a cook. He had to drop out of culinary school because he
was
hospitalized so often, his parents said.

"We had 10 years' worth of hospital records and unanimous opinions from
the
doctors," said Richard Wild, 62, who until recently was a computer
analyst.

But his son's initial application was turned down in 2003.

The family had sunk into debt because of medical bills, nearly losing
their
house of 30 years, but found a lawyer to file an appeal. The son, by then
in

his mid-30s, had to wait two more years to get a hearing scheduled, with
no
income and little life outside his parents' home and the hospital.

As his hearing date in October 2006 approached, Mark Wild told his
parents
that he feared another rejection. "It was his last chance at any dignity,
and

he said if they turned him down it would be too much to take," recalled
Mrs.
Wild, a nurse.

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, just a few days before the hearing, Mrs. Wild
woke up to find her son gone. On his desk lay his watch, his ring and a
bullet.

On that Thursday, Mrs. Wild, 55, got a call at work from their lawyer. "I
just wanted to give you the good news," she said he told her. "Somehow the
judge

has already approved the disability, it's a done deal, Mark's got it."

Two hours later, a deputy sheriff and a chaplain arrived to say that
hunters
had found Mark Wild's body in the woods, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot
wound.

"No one can say for sure, but we're convinced that his despondency and
fear
about the disability decision contributed to his death," said Mrs. Wild,
who

wears a pinch of her son's ashes in a small tube on a necklace.

Mr. Wild has tried to go back to work, but says he is so depressed he
cannot
do his job. He is applying for disability, but knows that he cannot
expect

an answer anytime soon.

Copyright 2007

The New York Times Company

list end

Eric Bridges

Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs

American Council of the Blind

Phone: (202) 467-5081

Fax: (202) 467-5085
     Ardis Bazyn
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