Re: Social Security backlog grows from lack of cash
- From: High Miles <2Blues17@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:55:40 -0500
Jim Higgins wrote:
Social Security backlog grows from lack of cashWhen did the federal government agree to support the disabled ?
http://tinyurl.com/6junmm
Anyone who stands in line for Social Security disability benefits learns
certain truths. The system is slow. It's wasteful. And it's often cruel.
Those who have tried to fix the system's immense backlog of claims know
why: Congress and the White House have tried to run the agency on the
cheap, starving a bureaucracy that must process 2.5 million disability
applications a year.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers whose disabilities have pushed
them out of the labor force wait in line for years before getting
benefits -- if they live that long.
And in the Portland area, where Social Security runs one of the nation's
slowest hearings offices, they'll wait even longer.
"It's hard to escape the conclusion that a system that's supposed to
help people who are hurting works instead to wear them down and outlast
them," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who has worked to fix problems
in the local office.
"Not everyone can fight back, and many can't survive this system."
Social Security's disability claims backlog, which nearly doubled in the
past decade, now stands at unprecedented levels as millions of baby
boomers pour into the agency for benefits.
They face an agency whose staffing levels are below those seen during
the Nixon administration 34 years ago, a bureaucracy so behind that its
computer system was designed before man set foot on the moon.
Five years ago, then-Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne B. Barnhart
earned a place in the agency's lore when she hauled a 25-foot chart into
a congressional hearing. The chart, unfurled by aides like the train of
a wedding dress, showed each step someone would take to get benefits if
they were forced to go the distance -- a 1,153-day odyssey.
"You could have heard a pin drop in the room," Barnhart says now. "They
were shocked."
Miscues plague agency
Social Security made big strides in the late 1990s to fix the backlog.
But it ballooned on Barnhart's watch, as Congress consistently failed to
meet her agency's budget requests. In fact, according to federal budget
records, Congress appropriated $5 billion less to Social Security during
the past 10 years than its commissioners asked for.
And it shows.
More than half the people who phoned Social Security for any reason in
2006 got busy signals, according to one government survey. And last
year, another study found, the agency made 400,000 Americans wait at
least two hours before serving them at its 1,300 field offices.
Agency officials say they can't afford to adequately police the 11.8
million Americans now receiving benefits through its disability
insurance program or Supplemental Security Income. It's a wasted chance
to save taxpayers billions that go to people no longer disabled.
Also, according to a Social Security audit, the agency mistakenly
overpaid more than $4 billion in disability payments in 2006, causing
additional heartaches.
Just ask Shirley Ferguson. The 57-year-old North Portlander worked 30
years as a waitress and bartender before the agony of back and knee
injuries -- then mysterious chest pains that send her to the floor
gasping -- left her unable to work.
Last year, a Social Security judge awarded Ferguson a "partially
favorable" decision of 10 months in back benefits, roughly $5,000. The
government sent her a check for $12,733. Ferguson and her husband,
broke, spent the money on living expenses. Now she's fighting for
ongoing disability benefits while the government hounds her for the
extra money it mistakenly sent.
"When you've been stuck in this horrible system," says Kimberly Tucker,
Ferguson's lawyer, "you accumulate a tremendous amount of debt just
trying to live."
Social Security, meanwhile, has repeatedly miscalculated how much
Ferguson owes, says Tucker, and now bills her client $192 a month.
"I don't know how I'll ever get the money to pay them back," Ferguson
says. "There's no way I can work."
Fixes haven't worked
Social Security has spent much of the last decade trying to streamline
the way it evaluates and winnows cases.
But the plans have scarcely made a dent and sometimes made matters
worse, according to a December report from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency.
"Unfortunately," the GAO report says, the agency "has a history of
implementing initiatives to improve claims processing that have been
poorly executed and therefore compounded its problems."
The man who heads Social Security, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, says
he's optimistic about a computer program now in place that sifts through
claims, identifies clearly disabled applicants and moves them into a
pool for quick approval. He's also pushing another fast-track measure
that will -- as it rolls out this fall -- speed cases for people
suffering any of 25 rare diseases or conditions.
Astrue has a special interest in the new plan. When his father, a
stockbroker, was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer in 1985, he waited
in line at the Somerville, Mass., Social Security office for his dad,
filling out paperwork to get him disability payments and the additional
benefit of early Medicare. His dad got the cash benefits in about four
or five months, Astrue recalls.
But the elder Astrue died in 1986 -- before he could outlive Medicare's
mandatory 24-month wait for benefits.
"It was a searing experience for me," Astrue says.
Hearings backlog
Across the nation, it takes an average of about five months for someone
to navigate the first phase of the screening process.
About 500,000 Americans a year fight on after they initially hear "no"
from the agency. Most appeal their denials to Social Security's
administrative law judges, who have the power to order the agency to
grant benefits.
And that's where the real delays begin.
The agency recently counted 762,335 people stuck in the agency's
hearings backlog, where it takes a national average of 512 days to get a
judge's ruling. The process takes 669 days in Portland's Social Security
hearings office.
Astrue ordered the agency to clear 65,000 claims that had languished in
the system for 1,000 days or longer, later describing this as a "moral
imperative."
Social Security's inspector general reported in February that backlogs
would increase further if some of its judges didn't work faster and that
the agency might consider setting production targets. The average judge
handles 485 cases a year, and the report suggested 500 to 550 would be a
good goal.
As it turns out, 11 of 13 judges now working cases in Oregon would miss
that mark, according to the report.
Judges in Portland's hearing office carry an average of 689 cases
apiece, nearly twice the recommended number of pending cases, says Frank
A. Cristaudo, Social Security's chief administrative law judge.
Some of the agency's judges say they move cases as fast as they get them
and that delays often occur in processing the appeals heading to their
desks. Judges say they need independence, even in the face of Social
Security's urgency to clear cases, so that only deserving people get
benefits.
"There is a lot of pressure on judges and managers to reduce the growth
of the backlog," says Ron Bernoski, president of the Association of
Administrative Law Judges. "It is much easier and quicker to pay a case
than to deny it."
Congress took a stab last year at reducing the backlog by allocating
$148 million more to Social Security than the president's proposed 2008
budget. The agency says it's spending the money to hire 189 new judges,
including one in Portland, and hopes to have up to 1,200 hearing cases
by year's end.
Astrue says the extra judges -- up from about 1,000 last year -- will
eventually bring the backlog down. He's optimistic that fast-tracking
initial claims, clearing old cases and improving electronic file
management will speed up the process.
The commissioner says he hopes the average claim that reaches the
agency's judges can be completed -- from claim to decision -- in about
15 months by the time his term expires.
In 2013.
A need for speed
One way to prevent delays is to secure benefits before claims get lost
in the hearings backlog.
A Portland nonprofit, Central City Concern, recently created a team of
five specialists just to prepare disability applications for some of the
metro area's most vulnerable citizens. The charity's Benefits and
Entitlements Specialist Team, a frenetic outfit, occupies a windowless
downtown office called the "bullpen."
Team members, backed by $361,000 in grants this year, have worked since
March helping physically impaired or mentally ill people -- many left
homeless by their conditions -- submit thorough claims. They work the
phones like detectives to hunt down evidence, including medical records
and doctors' summaries and photos.
Mellani Calvin, the team's manager, modeled the effort after a
successful national program. So far, says Calvin, the Portland team has
filed 20 claims and won nine approvals in an average of 25 days. One
applicant got benefits in a record seven days, she says.
The delay in getting disability benefits ranks consistently among the
top constituent complaints to Blumenauer and other members of Congress.
Blumenauer says lawmakers might have fixed this problem long ago if
Social Security's delays affected people with more clout.
"You would be seeing the media doing more, business leaders calling for
change, real political outrage and you would get some real pressure on
the administration," he says.
"What we have here, though, are largely invisible victims with not much
of a voice."
I knew that old and blind people were eligible, but never knew that any old
disability could qualify.
Waiting for claimants to die sounds like a good financial management technique,
if cruel for the victims.
Our government has never really been by or for the people.
.
- References:
- Social Security backlog grows from lack of cash
- From: Jim Higgins
- Social Security backlog grows from lack of cash
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