Disability Application Delay Mounts

Washington (dbtechno) - People apply for disability benefits with the U.S. Social Security Administration each year. Normally their claims are heard within a reasonable length of time, say a year to eighteen months.

Recently, some people have been left in limbo, some waiting as long as three years to hear the results of their disability claim case.

Over ninety percent of people who initially apply are rejected, sometimes just for typographical or common errors. Those who appeal win their cases about two thirds of the time, and are then awarded benefits. The long delay has caused a lot of hardship among applicants, people are losing their homes to bankruptcy, and some have even passed away while waiting to have their claim heard.

Social Security Disability benefits are intended for those who are judged unable to work or who face terminal or permanent illness.

New plans to hire Appeals Judges to hear cases are in the works. The amount of cases has soared, from just over three hundred thousand in fiscal year 2000, to the current amount of seven hundred fifty thousand cases waiting to be heard.

Currently there are about a thousand judges who hear appeals cases each year. The average wait for a hearing is about five hundred days, compared the old average of two hundred fifty present in 2000. Unless new judges are hired, it is expected that the average wait could even top four years or longer.

Currently the permission to hire new Appeals Hearings Judges and personnel is caught up in budget skirmishes between Congress and The White House due to domestic appropriations differences.

Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michael J. Astrue has stated that out and out fraud is rare. “Many of the cases waiting on appeal are borderline,” said Astrue. In the 1970’s there was very public charges made that disability money was being spent fraudulently which led to much greater scrutiny and various reforms in the Agency.