Associated Press (AP) released an article on June 25, 2013 stating Social Security is approving disability benefits at strikingly high rates for people whose claims were rejected by field offices or state agencies, according to House investigators. Compounding the situation, the agency often fails to do required follow-up reviews months or years later to make sure people are still disabled. Claims for benefits have increased by 25 percent since 2007, pushing the fund that supports the disability program to the brink of insolvency, which could mean reduced benefits. Social Security officials say the primary driver of the increase is demographic, mainly a surge in baby boomers who are more prone to disability as they age but are not quite old enough to qualify for retirement benefits. It is a well known fact the disability program has been swamped by claims over the last years since the recession. According to the AP article in 2012 3.2 million people applied for Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income.
Social Security disability claims are initially processed through local Social Security Administration field offices and state agencies, called Disability Determination Services, and most claims are denied. Once the claim is denied, an appeal is requested for Social Security to reconsider their denial. 90% of people are denied. An appeal is made to request a hearing and the wait for a hearing is 12-15 months on a national average. According to the AP article, the agency estimates there are 816,000 hearings pending. In addition, the vast majority of judges have approved benefits in more than half the cases they have decided, even though they were reviewing applications that had typically been rejected twice by state agencies, according to Social Security data. Of the 1,560 judges who have decided at least 50 cases since October, 195 judges approved benefits in at least 75 percent of their cases, according to the data, which were analyzed by congressional investigators. The union representing administrative law judges says judges are required to decide 500 to 700 cases a year in an effort to reduce the hearings backlog. The union says the requirement is an illegal quota that leads judges to sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny just to keep up with the flow of cases, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the judges’ union in April.
