People with disabilities often wait years for Social Security
August 3rd, 2008From the Portland Oregonian:
Getting disability payments can be a fight to the death
The Social Security Disability Insurance program has become a national quagmire, forcing people to suffer needlessly during interminable waits for a check.
More than 762,000 Americans sit in an unprecedented backlog of disability claims. Delays have hit all-time highs — the result of shoestring budgets, bureaucratic incompetence and poorly executed reforms …
In Portland, where the local Social Security hearings office posts some of the nation’s longest delays, the average appeal drags on 669 days.
Meanwhile, people are left in ruins. Many die waiting.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Atlanta’s disabled often wait years for aid
The two Atlanta Social Security hearing offices are known as “the backlog capital of the country.”
The Downtown hearing office at Peachtree Center takes 769 days on average — more than two years — to resolve a claim. It has 9,145 claims pending. The Atlanta North office on Clairmont Road is even worse, with a backlog of 12,497 claims and an average wait of 793 days.
In Monday’s Oregonian:
Benefits backlog swells as Social Security slims
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) 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.”
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