Sen. Bingaman wants to end benefit backlog at Social Security
Monday, November 05, 2007
The stories of New Mexicans waiting on their government inspired U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman to take action.There was "Rick," a 36-year-old leukemia patient, pipeline inspector and father of four, who had to file for bankruptcy after waiting more than 18 months on his appeal for a government disability check.
And there was the 48-year-old wife and mother suffering from Wegener's granulomatosis. She's on oxygen 24 hours a day and left her job at a catering service in July 2003. Hoping to get better, she waited to apply for benefits until July 2006. She was denied. and her appeal is still pending.
Then there's the 61-year-old cancer victim from Grants who died in May, 17 months after filing for benefits.
At the end of September, 746,744 Americans were waiting for a hearing to ask an administrative law judge to overturn their initial denial of disability checks from the Social Security Administration. The average wait at the Albuquerque field office is about the same as the national average 17 months.
The long delays are the direct result of three trend lines - aging baby boomers getting sick; baby boomers retiring at the Social Security Administration and seven straight years of Congress not meeting the agency's and the president's budget requests to hire replacements.
Thanks to disease, injury or incapacity, about 11.6 million Americans depend on checks from either the Social Security Disability Insurance program or the Supplemental Security Income program, both administered by the Social Security Administration.
Benefits differ depending on each circumstance and whether the recipient is a worker, spouse or a dependent, but the average disabled worker gets about $989 a month.
The number of disabled workers alone has more than doubled since 1990, from the 3 million to 6.9 million, but the number of Social Security Administration employees has dropped from more 82,000 in 1972 to approaching 60,000 today.
Most Social Security offices are kept busy, dealing with requests for new or replacement Social Security cards or other issues related to the average recipient.
John Bishop, an Albuquerque disability advocate who represents claimants in their appeals, said he has been working around the disability process for 20 years and "the delays are worse than ever."
"It's worse in places with high population growth" like Albuquerque, Bishop said.
He added the problem is not that Social Security employees are slow or don't care.
"They're really good people who are just swamped," Bishop said.
Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, has heard firsthand about the problems from New Mexicans and from testimony earlier this year at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, where the National Organization of Social Security Representatives related some of the specific stories from New Mexico and other states.
"We heard instance after instance where individuals with severe disabilities were unable to work and were forced to declare bankruptcy," Bingaman said.
"They lost their homes, suffered deterioration in their medical conditions, and some even died while their claims lingered in Social Security administration offices."
The backlog of hearing appeals on initial claims also means the agency falls behind in checking whether those receiving benefit checks are still disabled, said the president of with the National Association of Disability Examiners.
It is estimated that the government can save $10 for every $1 it spends on such reviews, testified Chuck Schimmels.
About 60 percent of the appeals ultimately are successful in winning a benefit check, which raises the question why so many are initially turned down.
Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said that often a person's condition worsens between the time they initially file for a claim and the time of the hearing.
The agency has recently been testing a computer program that to sort through the claims to conditions that are likely to get worse so that SSA officials can make a "compassionate allowance" without waiting for a hearing.
The agency also is creating a National Hearing Center to hear claims through videoconferencing from areas where the backlog is the greatest.
But the principal holdup on the backlog is money. Congress shorted SSA requests by nearly $1 billion this decade. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue testified the budget cuts in the last five years alone are the equivalent of 177,000 initial claims and 454,000 hearings.
That's why, when the spending bill that funds the Social Security Administration came to the floor two weeks ago, Bingaman offered an amendment to add $160 million over President Bush's request for the agency to help settle the disability appeals backlog.
"This incredible insurance program is breaking down because of our failure to fund the administration of the program," Bingaman said.
House and Senate negotiators have already agreed to keep the increase in the final bill. It's not enough to clear the backlog.
That would take $634 million.
But Astrue told Bingaman the extra funds would let the agency keep up with a projected increase in appeals next year and set the stage for a substantial reduction in the backlog in 2009.
Posted in Denied Insurance Claims