One of the biggest tragedies involved in the long wait times for Social Security disability claims is the fact that many claimants die while waiting for a final decision on their claim. This fact is not reported widely, but every year thousands of Americans die before they get approved for disability.
In 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which is an oversight division of Social Security, reported that approximately 7,400 claimants passed away while waiting for a disability hearing, which can take two years or longer to commence after the hearing has been requested. This amounted to about 0.7 percent of all the cases that were waiting for a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ).
These 7,400 claimants were asking for disability benefits because they could not work, but they could not get the benefits they deserved before many of them passed away as a result of the impairments they suffered from because of the long wait times.
Although claimants who pass away prior to their hearing is not a large segment of the disability claimant population, isn’t one person dying before they get relief too many?
According to the OIG, the average age of the claimants who passed way was 50. The average age of death for the rest of the American population is nearly 79.
This 2016 OIG report identified three steps Social Security could take to reduce the backlog. The first was to hire more ALJs, which the agency has, but indications are there are still more ALJs needed. The other two steps consisted of Social Security seeking assistance from other government agencies to help with the workload and to better use technology to expedite the process.
Unfortunately, these three steps have not reduced the backlog, in fact, the backlog seems to be growing each day and the wait times continue to increase and in the meantime, claimants keep passing away before they ever get a hearing before an ALJ.
