We knew it was going to happen; it was just a matter of time how noticeable it would become.
The backlog for people waiting for Social Security disability hearings has grown and is growing and the wait times for a hearing and hearing decisions is doing the same thing.
There are now more than 1.1 million people across the country waiting for their disability hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). On average, people can expect to wait 583 days from the date of request of their hearing before seeing an ALJ, according to this story. That equates to an average of about 19.5 months to wait for a hearing. A majority of people who are waiting for these hearings have been unable to work and support themselves due to their impairments, so you can imagine the financial strain these people are faced with during this period of time. There are at least 14 hearing sites nationwide that have an average hearing wait time of more than 700 days.
It’s not only wait times for hearings that have grown, but also the wait time disability claimants have to wait for a decision after their hearings have taken place. During the fourth quarter of 2015 the average wait time to receive a hearing decision was about 56 days compared to 78 days during the first quarter of 2017.
As we have indicated in previous posts, wait times for hearings and even wait times to receive decisions from ALJs is only likely to increase due to a necessary lack of funding from the federal government. There is no indication that the current administration or Congress has any interested in increasing funding for Social Security to alleviate the current backlog. Maybe something will be done when the backlog get so extreme that it cannot be ignored any longer.
