How can we fix social security disability, and keep the time a person files down to less than 8 months?

[gillian59]

Husband is 45. Worked for University of South Alabama Medical Center. They are exempt from having workers compensation. He had major surgery, had sever complications, and it totally disabled. Applied for Social Security Disability November 2010, denied. Appealed March 2011 still nothing. Now we had to hire an attorney to file the appeal, now the attorney will get 25% of his back pay when ever he is finally approved. Why? Should not take over 1 year to get his disability. Over 600 pages of medical records, x-rays, CT scans, MRI's and still nothing. How do you plan to fix this? There was over 80,000 claims in Alabama alone last year, where does this stop, and benefits start.

[ailwyn]

Because of unemployment, pending disability claims with Social Security are at an all time high. And the number of employees are at an all time low - and there will be further staffing cuts. Four states have so many disability cases pending that they skip the reconsideration step of the appeals process altogether.

Depending upon what area of the country you live in it takes one to two years to get to the hearing from the date the request was filed. Another reason - not enough ALJs (Administrative Law Judges). It isn't Social Security's fault; the employees do the best they can given the increase in claims and the shortage of staff. Also those employees do a whole lot more than disability claims and appeals. They process the retirement and survivor claims workloads. They process overpayments and frauds and work investigations and medical reviews. The rep payee system is a huge workload all by itself. They spend about seven hours interviewing and have one hour to work on their caseloads (at most because there is ongoing training and staff meetings) unless they are lucky and can work four hours overtime on Saturdays. The office I worked in was responsible for the population of six counties with under 70 employees.

People who are unemployed for whatever reason are filing for disability because they are desperate for any income they can get. Those with minor aches and pains or health conditions are bogging the system down.

40% to 60% of those who go to a hearing will be approved. Although that attorney can get up to 25% of back benefits or $6000 whichever is least, that attorney is giving your husband a 20% more chance of being approved then someone who doesn't have an attorney so his services are well worth it - in my estimation.

You could write your congressmen/women and ask that they NOT reduce Social Security's operating budget and that they add employees to the district offices which deal with the public.

[elkanah1]

Hang some of the gov't drones to motivate the others to work harder?

[ashbey15]

the University of South Alabama Medical Center should be paying disability
not ss

[zadok]

i don't know make some laws or something

[breasal]

The biggest help that I have seen outside of hiring an attorney is write to your elected officials (House and Senate). I have seen three different claims, in 3 different stages in two different states get their cases approved because of these letters. Don't take no for an answer, these officals can make sure that your husband can be moved to the front of the pile. In South and North Carolina, the 25% of his back pay is limited to $6,000. I hope that this is US wide and you can see more of that back pay in your pocket.