SSA FALLS FURTHER BEHIND IN CLAIMS PROCESSING AND FAIRNESS

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the SSA hearing offices over the past few years, the SSA is falling further and further behind in its ability to process disability claims, fairly and timely.
The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) issued its newest report finding that the SSA disability hearing process is inconsistent and increasingly backlogged.
The report found that although the rules and laws for SSA disability claims are the exact same for everyone, including claimants and SSA Judges, there was an increasingly wide variance among decisions by SSA Judges hearing similar claims. The report found that variance suggested that SSA Judges “may be applying law and agency policy differently” in individual disability claims.
The report also found that an increasing number of SSA claimants are not being fully informed of their rights by the SSA suggesting a “deliberate lack of compliance” by the SSA with federal policies.
The report also found that since 2000, with the current Administration, the average processing times for claims has risen dramatically. The average processing time for a claimant who has a hearing and is waiting for a decision is now close to 500 days. At the end of 2005 there were over 711,000 cases pending: the highest in US history and more than double since 2000.
The backlog time for individual SSA hearing offices varies wildly. For example; a very large city such as San Francisco had 2898 cases backlogged as of March 2006, but a much smaller city such as Oklahoma City had a backlog of over 10,400 cases waiting to be heard.

Improving the Social Security Administration’s Hearing Process (Sept. 2006) http://www.ssab.gov/ImprovingSSAHearingProcess.htm

FEDERAL COURT RECOMMENDS SSA DENIAL OF DISABILITY BE TOSSED OUT

I am pleased to bring news of another recommendation by a Federal Court Judge to toss out a decision by a Social Security Judge that had denied disability benefits to a claimant.
In this SSA claim, the claimant was older woman who had been unable to continue her past work as a fast food cook and cashier due to severe degenerative disease of her spine. The claimant presented medical evidence of her disability as well as all records of her employment, as required by the SSA. The claimant showed that she had been required to lift up to 50 pounds in her job as an unskilled fast food cook. At the SSA hearing the SSA vocational expert testified that given her impairments, the claimant could not perform her past work as a cashier.
Despite this evidence, the SSA Judge denied her disability benefits. The SSA Judge found that the claimant could return to her past work as a “waitress” wherein she only had to lift up to 20 pounds and could also return to her past work as a cashier.
On appeal to federal court, we argued strongly that there was no evidence to support the SSA Judge’s decision. We showed that a hypertext search of the hundreds of pages of court record failed to show any instance where the claimant was ever employed as a waitress. We further argued that the SSA Judge was wrong in finding that the claimant’s past job only required her to lift 20 pounds, instead of up to 50 pounds. We further argued that the SSA Judge was wrong to ignore the testimony of his own expert who stated that the claimant could not perform her past work as a cashier.
The Federal Court agreed with all our arguments. The Court found there was no evidence in the record that the claimant was ever employed as a waitress as alleged by the SSA Judge. The Court also found that the SSA Judge failed to explain why he disregarded the claimant’s statements that her past job required her to lift up to 50 pounds. The Court also found that there was no evidence as alleged by the SSA Judge that the SSA vocational expert found that the claimant could perform her past work as a cook.
Since there was little to no evidence of record to support the SSA Judge’s decision to deny benefits, the Federal Court recommended that decision be tossed out and the claimant be provided a new SSA hearing for her disability claim.