RSD In the News : FWD: USA Today-Disability delays can lead to personal havoc

Disability delays can lead to personal havoc
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Enlarge By Jeff W. Reinking for USA TODAY

Peter Schille, 44, has been waiting five years to get back on disability.



BEST, WORST WAIT TIMES

Social Security Administration offices with the shortest and longest average waits for hearings on whether an applicant is too disabled to work:

Shortest average waits

Hearing office In days

Harrisburg, Pa. 276

Charleston, S.C. 289

Middlesboro, Ky. 289

Charlottesville, Va. 314

Kingsport, Tenn. 328

Long Beach 342

Springfield, Mass. 344

Huntington, W.Va. 353

Roanoke, Va. 356

Boston 357

Longest average waits

Atlanta 932

Columbus 841

Miami 789

Indianapolis 780

San Rafael, Calif. 737

Dayton, Ohio 735

Lansing, Mich. 726

Flint, Mich. 719

Queens, N.Y. 703

Buffalo 700

Note: 2007 figures are as of June 29.

Sources: Social Security Administration and National Council of Social Security Management Associations





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By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
Jason Hoaks was a corrections officer in Wyoming when he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2002. He suffered a stroke during surgery that resulted in vision problems, the loss of strength and sensation on his right side, memory loss and depression. He applied for Social Security disability benefits and was denied.
Hoaks returned to work with limited duties until 2005, when his condition worsened. Again he applied for disability benefits and was denied. This time he fought the denial and won — 18 months later.


BACKLOG: Disabled worker cases at a record

Hoaks, 26, was forced to declare bankruptcy and default on his student loans. "Financially, it's killed us," says his father, Dale. "My wife and I will never be able to retire because of these bills."

Hoaks' experience with the Social Security disability system isn't unusual. Of 2.5 million people who file disability claims annually, nearly two in three get denied initially. If they pursue a federal hearing, they join about 745,000 others whose appeals are backlogged. As of June, their average wait for a decision was 529 days. The lengthy waits lead to bankruptcies and foreclosures, drinking and drugs, depression and divorce, even suicide, according to claimants, their representatives and employees of the Social Security Administration.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Peter | Social Security | Ga | Backlog
"People are living in cars. People are going from one family member to the next," says Matt Greenbaum, a New Orleans lawyer who has represented disability claimants for 30 years. "I had a hearing the other day where the judge asked him his address. He couldn't give an address because he didn't have one."

In the Atlanta area, waits of 2½ years for a hearing are the norm. Jeffery Houston of Temple, Ga., has waited more than four years. He's sold almost everything he owned except his home and pickup.

Houston, 46, says he was injured in 1999 when 32 sheets of plate glass fell on him, shattering his shoulder. He says he suffers from congestive heart failure, chronic diabetes, asthma, phlebitis, sleep apnea and deteriorating discs in his back. Yet a judge assigned to his case ruled in 2003 that he could be a parking lot attendant.

His roommate, Linda Cleland, begs to differ. "He wakes me up screaming, 'I'm dying,' " she says. "He's in so much pain that he can't even sleep like he's supposed to."

'Lost in the system'

The backlog has a fiscal impact on states, which pay more in Medicaid and social services to people with disabilities waiting for decisions from the federal government. It has an impact on the administrative law judges, who average 693 pending cases.

The financial impact is greatest on the claimants. Those who hire lawyers or representatives customarily pay 25% of their retroactive award if they are successful, up to a federal ceiling of $5,300.

Peter Schille lives in his parents' basement in order to pay his lawyer $200 a month while waiting for his case to be decided. He wrestles with lasting effects of a heart transplant: brittle bones, stiff joints and fatigue. Other than selling paintings, he's never held a job.

Schille, 44, collected disability for 16 years until 2002, when benefits were cut off based on a redetermination of his case. He's been appealing ever since. "I'm lost in the system, and there's no one I can call," Schille says. "I feel like the system is so big, one person can't possibly do anything about it."

More than 60% of those who wait for hearings eventually win their claims, but the delays take a toll:

•Katie Probst was awarded benefits in 1991 for her lupus and depression but lost them five years later. The Clayton, N.C., woman got them reinstated, only to be told in 2001 that she had collected them improperly and owed more than $50,000. It took five years to win her appeal, during which time her husband worked seven days a week. "It was like starting over," Probst, 52, says. "I still had to prove to them that I was sick."

•Debbie Cline, 45, of Loganville, Ga., waited three years to collect insurance for bipolar and manic depression. She became homeless and moved back in with her ex-husband. "They just keep you waiting like you're a puppet," she says.

No 'really easy solution'

Michael Astrue recalls his father's disability claim in 1985 after a cerebral hemorrhage caused by brain cancer in his early 50s. He died within 18 months. The claim was approved, but the wait "seemed like agony," Astrue says.

Now the commissioner of Social Security, Astrue wants to make it easier to file for disability. He's pushing simplified procedures for extreme cases, such as terminal cancer. He's updating and expanding the list of impairments that qualify for disability. He's trying to open a national center to hold electronic hearings, thereby easing backlogs in places such as Atlanta.

All of that, Astrue says, won't be enough to stop the backlog of appeals from growing because of an aging population. Social Security projects cases to grow about 90,000 annually over the next five years. That means the backlog could hit 1 million in 2010.

"I don't think there is any really easy solution," Astrue says.

Some disability advocates want an agency overhaul. "The problems with Social Security are on a par with a lot of the problems that people were having with the IRS" before Congress mandated changes, says Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

Others say the system focuses on fraud rather than the disabled. More than three-fourths of 99,000 fraud allegations reported to the agency's inspector general last year involved disability payments.

"The system leans toward denying the case," says Marty Ford, director of legal advocacy for the Disability Policy Collaboration.