Social Security Judges Face Violent Threats

[Joanne98]

WASHINGTON — Judges who hear Social Security disability cases are facing a growing number of violent threats from claimants angry over being denied benefits or frustrated at lengthy delays in processing claims.

There were at least 80 threats to kill or harm administrative law judges or staff over the past year – an 18 percent increase over the previous reporting period, according to data collected by the agency.

The data was released to the Association of Administrative Law Judges and made available to The Associated Press.

One claimant in Albuquerque, N.M., called his congressman's office to say he was going to "take his guns and shoot employees" in the Social Security hearing office. In Eugene, Ore., a man who was denied benefits said he is "ready to join the Taliban and hurt some people." Another claimant denied benefits told a judge in Greenville, S.C., that he was a sniper in the military and "would go take care of the problem."

"I'm not sure the number is as significant as the kind of threats being made," said Randall Frye, a judge based in Charlotte, N.C., and the president of the judges' union. "There seem to be more threats of serious bodily harm, not only to the judge but to the judge's family."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/14/social-security-judges-violent-threats_n_783245.html

The judges are corrupt.

[davidinalameda]

1. corrupt?

in what way

[ThomCat]

8. Having first line people who are not medical professionals

decide who gets disability, and by default they deny, deny, deny.

Your wait for an appeal takes an AVERAGE of 2.5 years and as long as 6 years! In that wait time, you are considered Not Disabled by every agency you need to go to for help, because Social Security turned you down.

It makes your life hell as a person with a disability, all because the social security administration wanted to save some money by hiring people who were not skilled medical professionals.

People DIE because of this decision. There will never be any way of knowing how many, because we have no way of knowing how many:

1. had no way of getting income and become homeless and died
   
2. were denied an essential service that they needed and died as a result
   
3. could not get any health care and died (if you need the care of a specialist, they may not accept medicaid, so you may absolutely need medicare to survive)
   

I am mostly home-bound because of my disability. A friend takes care of me in my home. She has moved in with me as my roommate. Trying to get a personal care aid from an agency was a nightmare because according to them, I am not disabled, because Social Security says so.

I have income only because my last employer, where I was a high level corporate consultant, has the foresight to provide disability insurance for me as a perk. I have a percentage of my salary until I am 65 years old. (In another post I could tell you about how that insurance companies is scamming and cheating us, even here. It cheats me out of about 20% of the income I should have received. But that's another post.) If I had to depend upon Social Security, I'd have starved 2.5 years ago.

I'd have instead been depending only upon public assistance for the last 2.5 years, and almost certainly been homeless, but for a home-bound person to navigate and get public assistance successfully is nearly impossible.

All of this because Social Security has a mandate to save money. That mandate started under Clinton, and never stopped.

Is saving money that important?

Should it ever be that important?

What else would you call that, if not corrupt?

[liberalhistorian]

14. While everything you say is quite true, it isn't just the

mandate to save money that is the cause of this, it's the fact that the SSA has been severely underfunded these past nine years, beginning with G.W. Bush's presidency. You know, the "starve the government then claim it doesn't work" model of business. As a result, the agency is grossly understaffed and underfunded, with some offices in major cities even being closed, at the very time when there are more applicants, and more desperation, than ever.

The thing is, many people are denied because they don't have specialist attorneys and, thus, don't know how to navigate the system. It is a very specialized area of both the law and government and it takes a long time for even attorneys to learn the ropes with it. Most attorneys will not charge anything for it until you are granted benefits, then will take a percentage of the lump sum of the retroactive benefits you receive at first once your disability is granted. Most people don't want to do that because they see that percentage going to the attorney, but what they need to do is think long-term. They are generally not going to be granted benefits if they don't have an attorney, except in really severe, cut-and-dry cases, which are very rare. You are almost always denied at first, no matter how legitimate the case, they make you fight for it. Attorneys know the specialized law, they know how to navigate the system and how best to present your case, and their involvement can cut down greatly on the amount of time you'll wait to receive benefits. And I wouldn't complain about fees, either, most who work on contingency take the chance that you won't be granted benefits and they won't be paid, and most work for months, if not a couple of years, receiving nothing. And the work is very intense and complex, also, it's not just a matter of knowing how to fill out the paperwork and shuffling papers. Far from it.

[ThomCat]

19. It has nothing to do with navigating the system.

:wtf:

There is nothing to navigate. Do you know anything first hand?

You fill out the application for hearing. You present your medical information. If you have an attorney you provide your attorney's information. Then you wait. That's it. That's Everything.

You should get called in for an interview by the person reviewing your case. But that doesn't always happen.

If you get approved, good for you. If you don't get approved, you will be given a bureaucratic reason why. Either way, you receive the notice int he mail. It takes about 6 months to get this notice from when you applies for your disability application.

If you were rejected, you have to apply for an appeal. You have 30 days to file for that appeal. The appeal is handled by a judge. The wait is as little as 1 year, and average of 2.5 years, or as long as 6 years.

That is the entire system. Everything! There is nothing, nothing, nothing to navigate. All an attorney does for you is show up at the interview, and/or the appeal to answer questions for you. They cannot do anything else for you.

Many attorneys, at the interview, will deliberately cause their clients to lose the case and go to an appeal. Why, because that DOUBLES the percentage that the attorney gets for representing your case.

All attorneys work for a percentage of your first year's benefits. That is the law in SS cases. All of them. Not Most. All of them.

The fact that the percentage doubles if your case gets to the appeal level, and that attorneys take advantage of this, is very well known among disability advocates, and they will warn you if they know you are applying for disability. Especially if they know you are represented by one of the major law firms that are well known for always doing this. So it usually does not make any sense to get an attorney until the appeal stage. Just show up on your own for the interview if you are called, bring all your medical records, and be prepared to answer questions. You will know your medical records better than your attorney anyway.

It is nice if you to respond to my posts, but it really seems like you don't know what you are talking about. You seem to be posting so that you can defend those poor misunderstood attorneys. :eyes:

[davidinalameda]

22. but does that make the judges corrupt?

it makes the system fucked up but it in no way makes the judges corrupt

[ThomCat]

25. It makes the system corrupt. If the judges are going along with it

and voluntarily purging people, then yes, they are also corrupt.

If there are honest judges fighting to get people into the system so they get all the benefits they are entitled to, then no, those judges are not corrupt. They are just the easiest targets for the people who are incredibly frustrated and angry because the entire system is corrupt.

So, the answer is, it depends.

In general, I would say that Social Security is systematically defrauding people out of social security disability, and at least some Judges MUST have a hand in it. There is definitely SOME corruption involved.

People are paying into social security. People have a right to that social security. But the system has been rigged so that most people who become disabled and need it will never, ever see a penny of that money.

Many who have severe disabilities will die before they can collect just because of the automatic delays, and the long, years long waits for appeals. The mortality rates for people with serious disabilities, combined with crushing poverty, (and a high chance of homelessness) a significant number probably won't live to see their appeal.

As morbid as this sounds, this is probably a deliberate cost savings strategy. Make a certain predictable percentage die before they can collect. The higher the denial rate, and longer the wait, the higher the attrition rate.

I'm sure they have a bland, whitewashed table for it somewhere in an accountant's office with cost savings calculated.

Judges are being pressured to purge an additional X%, and extend waits by an additional Y weeks, leading to Z Million dollar additional savings this year.

Yeah, how could that be anything but corrupt if it boils down to suffering and the gradual lost lives of real people?

The real problem is how do we ever prove it when Social Security never releases information that can be used to study the mortality of clients after filing, how cases are handled, and internal policies over time?

The government will happily give away our private information in many other agencies and departments, as long as they're giving it to corporations (see medicare and patient info, Dept of the Interior and info on indigenous peoples, CDC and medical info if it's politically convenient, etc.) but here they won't give out anything supposedly in the name of privacy, but it is really in the name of covering their asses. The double standard in where and when and how our personal information is handles is often astounding. Only when it is in their best interest is our information suddenly in a lock-box, so that nobody can study it.

Without studies of how our cases have been handled, we will never prove the corruption. And that's the way they want it. No agency ever wants accountability.

[davidinalameda]

28. my application for disability is pending

I had to get an attorney because if I didn't appeal my first denial, I would have had my medicaid denied

that's the main reason I even appealed the decision

the paperwork that I've had to fill out is insane; I had 17 hospitals and medical offices listed on my application; had to print out all those medical release forms; mail them to the SS office and wait

I honestly believe that the process is to test how much you want the disability; it isn't for the faint hearted

and I don't necessarily believe that is a bad thing-I live in an area where too many people get disability

it's been rumored for decades that there are always doctors that will be more than happy to sign those disability papers for a few bucks thrown their way

the system is broken on both ends

as for the judges, they can only follow the rules that are there

if I'm denied after my hearing, I'm not going to blame the judge-why would I

anyway, I know that I'll eventually be granted disability due to my hearing loss; my current application focuses on something else

[1monster]

36. It started under Reagan. That is when the wait times for a final decison became FIVE

years. He slashed the budget for the SSI division of Social Security.

I went through the process of applying for SSI for my stepson, a young man with psyconeural impairment, hearing impairment, aural processing delay, a mental/developmental age at the time of five years old, a history of some kind of seizure disorder that was never diagnosed, and a myriad of other problems. In the end, after more than a year of the process, he was turned down. Today, his mental/developmental age is that of a backward ten or eleven year old. He needs to be in a group home, but can't get in, because one needs SSI and medicaid for placement in a group home.

The only way to get SSI these days is to go in with a lawyer from the git-go.

[ThomCat]

38. I did not realize that it started quite that early.

But knowing everything else Reagan did, that makes perfect sense. :(

He seemed to think that people with disabilities could be made to disappear simply by taking all of use out of the budget everywhere we appeared.

:grr:

In the end all he did was put people on the street without access to help. But what the hell did he care? He was increasing law enforcement budgets and adding more jail cells! It was the start of the militarization of the police and the prison industry boom. People with disabilities got to be the 'volunteers' who helped feed both of those changes, whether we liked it or not.

:(

Good 'ol Saint Ronnie...

[bananas]

39. and the head of ss was held in contempt of court

Someone should look up that decision,
it was very harshly worded.

[mudplanet]

40. It's not acceptable but it's understandable that SS administrative judges get threatened

for all of the reasons you list. But it's the system that's corrupt, not the judges.

I'm a social worker and have experienced just about every kind of bullshit you can imagine in the social security disability process. And what you say about the system killing people is absolutely correct: someone becomes disabled, applies for disability benefits (which aren't very much - probably the average SSDI payee gets in the neighborhood of $900 a month and the majority must live on that alone. SSI recipients get an average of $650 a month), and then has to figure out how to survive on savings and charity until someone with no medical training makes a determination about whether they're "really" disabled. This process can take years and many people that are ill simply do not survive it.

IMHO when someone applies for SSDI or SSI they should be put immediately on support followed by a timely hearing with a small panel of independent professionals in the health care field to determine the nature and duration of the disability and if anything can be done to rehabilitate the person. If the person is found to be malingering then some penalty can be imposed. This would assume we live in a country that values humanity.

Another gaping hole in the whole process is the simple fact that the majority of people do not know that they are covered by Social Security Disability Insurance and so quite literally will become disabled and then go broke and become homeless before they even apply.

Some of this problem is addressed in some states by supplementary programs, e.g., in New Mexico there is a General Assistance program that is supposed to provide some meager income for people who have become disabled but have not yet completed the Social Security process. However, lately they've taken the stance that if an individual is not receiving SSDI or SSI than that person is not disabled. In other words, they've applied a catch 22 so no one receives GA. As near as I can tell the funding for the program is being used to pay staff and administrative law judges, period. I mean, what's the point of applying? I'll get letters of denial for clients that list "we have not received your medical records" as the cause and then grossly misspells the names of all of the sources that I have submitted. And included in the letter of denial is a letter of denial for a completely different person who lives in another part of the state and who isn't my client!

[ThomCat]

42. I agree with your proposal. That would work.

And it would be the humane thing to do. It would also keep a lot of people alive who are dying now. But it would cost money, so it won't happen.

People in Washington will never spend money to save the lives of people with disabilities. They certainly won't spend any money to save the lives of POOR people with disabilities, and every one of us, by definition, has no resources because that is what is required by the social security system. That makes us exactly the people Washington is least likely to help. :(

I can add to your story about Social Security Office deliberately denying claims based on deliberately failing to get medical records. It happened to me too. They refused to request most of my medical records from my primary doctor. They blatantly refused.

The request they sent to my primary doctor's office for my medical records only requested my charts. They did not request the other six categories of records listed on the release, so they didn't receive those other categories of records. (referrals and responses, films and images, letters, etc.) All they got was my charts. I eventually saw the request form in my file after my denial. It was very clear. They checked off what they wanted, only one line, charts.

Then, they never called me in for an interview even though everyone is supposed to get an interview. Deliberate failure? Knowing that they failed to get my records and expecting that I might bring a complete set of records in with me? Probably. I had left 2 messages with the guy who accepted my application asking when I would hear any kind of follow-up, and never got a response. They knew I was waiting for them. So it is almost certain that the lack of an interview was intentional.

If they had told me at any point prior that they never received all my records I would have hand-delivered a file folder with all of my records to them the very next day. No effort was ever made.

My doctors office has no record of any phone call, any fax, any email, or any communication of any kind following up on that initial request for records. I got no contract from that office until I received my denial.

When I got the denial, the stated reason for the denial was insufficient medical information provided. But this insufficient medical information was their doing, and deliberate. So I get to wait for 2.5 years to see a judge because they wanted me to. x(

What benefit did they get from making me wait 2.5 years longer?

1. They save 2.5 years of money.
   
   
2. If I had died in the past 2.5 years, they would save far more. If I had not been lucky enough to have private disability insurance, and a friend willing to move in with me as my health care aid, I probably would have died 2 years ago. It was a good bet on their part. I am beating the odds.
   
   
3. They saved time over having to actually do their job and request and review my medical records. A job is much easier when you don't actually have to do your job. When all you have to do is screw it up and send out a bureaucratic denial, it's fast and easy, and someone still got paid! This kind of behavior is probably even worth a bonus if it repeats often enough.
   
   
4. They may have saved even more with an administrative assistant instead of a real reviewer. Any minimum wage administrative assistant could screw up the request for medical records and send out a denial letter. If they are really smart they may have had one administrative assistant who was assigned to help all of the reviewers by doing all of these dump and deny jobs en-mass in order to consolidate the work and save even more money. (as a corporate consultant, back when I was able to work, that would have been the type of thing I would have expected to see from some of my smarmier client companies.)
   

[mudplanet]

43. I'm sorry you got so screwed in this process. However, I'm not sure

it was anything deliberate, as my experience with individual SS workers indicates to me that they have no "dog in the fight" as to whether or not someone gets denied or accepted. To my knowledge there isn't any quota or benefit to the case worker at social security for denying someone. At the judgeship level it may very well be different. I've dealt with one administrative judge in Texas who has an approval rate of 15% - meaning that, in his judgment, 85% of the people that come before him are not really disabled and that I'm spending most of my time trying to help people who are not disabled get disability benefits.

It's so much fun living in public housing on disability benefits that the perfectly abled are lining up to scam the system.

If you have sufficient funds to survive you're doing better than the majority of my clients (I work with the homeless for the most part) but I can suggest that you gather up all of your documentation, find a decent social worker who can give you some time, and contact your elected representatives at both the state and federal levels (although the ONE representative that will have the most clout will be your federal senator). I had similar issues with a client (who had been denied out-of-hand and who was disabled for multiple reasons, even plainly, visibly disabled), and we got her her disability status within about three months of contacting the federal representative, whose staff member was very helpful. It's amazing how much attention your case gets when there is a letter from an elected federal official somewhere in your file. It shouldn't take that, but there it is.

[tularetom]

2. Gee, who could have ever seen this coming?

This is what we have to look forward to after the recommendations of the deficit commission are adopted. Except an order of magnitude or two more frequent. And worse.

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. +1

Do away with SS or reduce benefits and watch what happens to this Country.

It won't be a good thing.

But hey the rich need their tax cuts extended! :eyes:

[shanti]

24. exactly

it will get real ugly real fast if they mess with our SS!

[kickysnana]

4. Delay is 5+ years and no adult safety net...people are dying. n/t

[ThomCat]

6. Yes, and it was a foreseeable consequence of their policies.

:(

We are going to have people who are not medical professionals make the decisions about who gets disability. Their default judgment is going to be to deny you disability if they don't understand your case or have any questions. That way they let the judge handle it.

But you have to wait YEARS to see the judge. How many people does this kill? How many people die in each year of this wait?

Even if you do eventually get approved for disability, you have to wait an 2 ADDITIONAL years to get Medicare. How many people die in those 2 years? Why do they make you wait 2 years to get approved for Medicare when you are on disability?

[creeksneakers2]

35. People who receive Social Security are

automatically eligible for Medicare. You can sign up for it on the web. When I put my wife on, it was so easy that I thought I was just signing up to get information sent. They put her right on.

[ThomCat]

37. Yes, but that is not true for social security disability.

For social security disability there is a 2 year delay. :(

[ThomCat]

5. I keep hearing about more and more of us getting denied for bullshit

reasons. There seems to be a purge going on. Nobody will officially admit that there is a purge. But it seems that every effort is being made to come up with excuses to deny benefits to people, no matter how absurd those excuses are.

If you have a "celebrity disability" or a "simple diagnosis" you have it easier. That means that you have something with a name. You can tell the judge what your disability is in 3 words or less. If a doctor backs up the diagnosis, I keep hearing that you're pretty good to go.

But everyone else, all the rest of us, who have collections of symptoms that add up to a disability, or syndromes that are disabling, we have to argue for everything. We have to methodically prove each and every symptom and every limitation.

And the more complicated our medical case, the more stuff we need to argue and defend, the less they want to hear about it. It's long and tiring, and very, very boring.

All a judge has to do is nit-pick and argue that "I don't believe that this one symptom is really as bad as you think it is." It's subjective. It's impossible to prove. It's your word against the judge. And once the judge decides that you're being dishonest about one symptom, every symptom is in doubt, and everything slides downhill. One by one, everything can get denied and suddenly you're declared "not disabled" regardless of what your doctors say and all that pile of medical documentation. Just because the judge was bored, or tired, or in a bad mood. And then what are you going to do?

And what if it wasn't because the judge was tired or bored or in a bad mood? What if it really was deliberate because the judge has numbers to meet? What if the judge has to remove a certain number of people from the rolls this month, and by the end of this year? How are we going to know that? How are we going to prove it? We'll only know it for sure as a statistical trend looking back years from now if that data is eventually released to researchers.

I have a hearing scheduled for the end of this month. I've waited two and a half years for this hearing, and it is scheduled for the Friday after Thanksgiving, on a day the Judge is definitely not going to want to be there. He's going to want to get out there as quickly as possible, and my case is a complicated one.

I would be a fool to say I'm not scared about what that judge is going to be thinking and what is going to happen... :(

[raouldukelives]

7. Wishing you the best of luck nt

[ThomCat]

21. Thank you very much.

I hope my case is as air-tight as it could reasonably be. But with the system being what it is, I will never turn down more luck. :hug:

[WolverineDG]

9. Well, if they'd stop automatically denying every claim

this wouldn't be a problem.

dg

[Ishoutandscream2]

17. +1.

People are hurting, and when desperate, they will resort to desperate means.

[WolverineDG]

26. I used to work for legal aid

it never failed to amaze me when I had clients who were on SS Disability, yet were young & able-bodied (my fave diagnosis was "asthma," which I also have but never thought it was an excuse not to work), while the clients of the paralegal who handled SS Disability appeals were always extremely elderly &/or obviously ill & whose medical records were larger than the NYC phone book.

dg

[sendero]

29. That's one problem....

....people who are gaming the system ruin it for legitimate users.

And the fact that the country is going broke isn't helping either. I would not expect disability or any other government benefit to become easier to get in the coming years, quite the opposite.

[WingDinger]

10. You have waited three years to get a judge. Yopu have ZERO resources, as demanded by the system

and you are at the end of your lifes rope. To be told as I was, We are sorry you get a LITTLE tired working. But, you get FUCKING ZILCH. Survive another two years, and then, if you survive, and hire a good attorney, you will recieve your benefits you paid into your WHOLE WORKING LIFE, less all the attorney fees. BULLSHIT.

[ThomCat]

11. That's it right there. If you don't have an attorney they dismiss

your case no matter what evidence you have. They want to force you to hire an attorney, as if giving a huge chunk of money to some rich guy to speak for you for a few minutes somehow makes you credible, but you have no credibility without an attorney. That is exactly the attitude.

It is YOUR disability money that YOU paid into, but unless you are willing to give it away to an attorney, you will never see any of it.

:(

[liberalhistorian]

15. Excuse me, but most ss attorneys I know are not rich by any

means, far from it. And it is NOT NOT NOT just a matter of "speaking for you for a few minutes". There is a LOT of complex work that goes on in preparing and presenting cases and it takes years of hard, rigorous study to first get a law degree in the first place and then to become an expert in what is a very specialized, complex area of law. Most work on a contingency basis and can work for months or years on a case without being paid anything and they'll get nothing if the claim is ultimately denied. How many people would work for months or years for no money? Many I've known have actually closed their practices and gone on to something else because they weren't making it. Many do it because they genuinely want to help and hate the way the system is as much as those who are stuck in it do.

[ThomCat]

18. My attorney had me do all the work collecting all my records

which is often most of the hours. He met with me for half an hour 2.5 years ago. He is meeting with me for an hour later this month before the hearing. At then he will be at the hearing itself. That's it. Total!

I have been asking around to all the people I know who gone through this before me (quite a few, given that I volunteered with an advocacy group for people with disabilities for years) and you are the FIRST person to tell me that this isn't typical. All the feedback I have getting, some of it less than polite, is saying that the attorneys typically give you only a few hours of their time total. The big law firms that specialize in disability claims apparently make a system out of it so that they are able to give the absolute minimum time.

Of attorneys change their practice to start handing some other type of law, that's probably because they were not getting enough clients.

Months or years? No attorney that I've ever heard of puts months or years into a disability case. That's fantasy!

And, yes, they all work on a contingency basis. They are REQUIRED to work on a contingency basis. That's how the social security system works. Attorneys get paid a percentage of their client's first year's social security payments, regardless of the number of hours they put in. So they have no incentive to put in a lot of hours. 1 hour, or 100, they get paid exactly the same percentage.

That is exactly why attorneys put in so little time. Do you really think attorneys are going to invest more time than they need to when their pay isn't going to change? Do you think attorney's aren't smart enough to realize that they make the same money even if they only do the minimum? Do you really think they aren't smart enough to realize that in this system their income comes from Volume of total customers, not from number of hours?

:wtf:

[WolverineDG]

27. Oh yeah, your atty is getting rich off of $3000 or 20% of retro,

whichever is *lower*.

Would you work for 18 months (minimum) if the most you could make was $3000?

dg

[ThomCat]

30. No attorney is working for 18 months.

I have yet to hear of an attorney meeting more than a few times with a client before the hearing, so it's a few hours at most. This is a volume market. They make their money based on sheer number of clients.

That 18 months is waiting. And I have to wait that 18 months just like the attorney does. Unfortunately, while we are waiting, I'm denied benefits because I'm not considered disabled. All that attorney is denied is the paycheck from my specific case. That isn't the attorney's fault. It's the SS System's fault. But the point is that I'm the one who is taking the hit, not the attorney.

I know that you will always post from the attorney's perspective, defending the attorney, but come on, claiming that an attorneys "work for 18 months" on disability cases? That is way just over the top ridiculous! That is serious fantasy nonsense, and you definitely have to know that.

[WolverineDG]

33. he's responsible for your case for that 18 months,

and sorry you feel he's not "working" on your case 24/7, but he does have other cases to handle.

dg

[ThomCat]

34. I know he has other cases.

:eyes:

I've already posted several times that I know damned well that they make their money from their volume of clients.

I have no reason to be sorry. I don't expect an attorney to only work on my case. I also don't expect him to work on my case more hours than he really does. I don't exaggerate what he does. I don't feel the need to pat him on the back. He is getting paid a percentage of my 1st years Social Security payments for putting in a few hours of work. I don't see where I was incorrect on any of this.

So what is your point of your post?

You seem to enjoy being very very hostile and combative when you post to me recently. Why? :(

[lib2DaBone]

12. It's a society of attorneys, benefitting attorneys.. with the laws written by... you guessed it.

Good luck in your fight. I know how you feel. I had to wait 6 months in a ruling for unemployment when my employer left town.. it wasn't even my fault. They deny first... as you say.. and could care less what the truth is.

[sammytko]

13. My constitutional law instructor is an SS judge in "real" life

I'm going to ask him about this. He told us that he has to follow strict guidelines when he decides cases.

I wonder if it is anything like VA disability cases. When I filed my VA claim I looked up the examination forms the doctors use to rate your condition. They are out there - just google or check out the VA page. Anyway there are certain criteria you have to meet.

And it seems weird that a person with a missing limb is not considered as bad off as someone with say hypothyroidism - in my case. Something about you can get a prosthetic for the limb, but you can never "cure" your thyroid gland. That is just an example.

Maybe that is why they say get a lawyer. I'm sure the SS system is far harder to navigate.

[liberalhistorian]

16. It is VERY hard to navigate, and it takes years to fully

learn this very specialized, complex area of the law. And it can take months to fully and effectively prepare a case, months in which you are not being paid because you're on contingency. And you get nothing if the claim is ultimately denied.

[ThomCat]

20. It is NOT hard to navigate. That is total BS!

You go to one office. You fill out one application. You provide one additional form to tell them who your attorney is.

Your attorney helps you only in editing your application so that it reads well and is likely to pass muster with the reviewer. But this isn't something as incredibly difficult, specialize, or complex as you make it out to be. It is simple enough that most adults can do it by themselves without any help. It is less complicated that filing taxes. It is a questionnaire.

Have you ever seen it yourself? Have you ever filled it out?

Your attorney gives you advice. That's all.

Because all attorneys work on a contingency fee, and that fee doubles if your case gets rejected and goes to an appeal, your attorney has an incentive to see that your application isn't perfect. That incentive sucks, but it's there. Any attorney who wants to maximize his money would deliberately put enough flaws in your application to make sure you lose your case the first time and have to appeal.

So, any smart person better not depend entirely on their attorney and better look over their own application closely. Be confident in your own answers, and take your attorney's answers only as suggestions.

[shanti]

23. i wonder

how many of these disgruntled people are teabaggers? the height of hypocrisy!

[Silver Swan]

31. Before I retired

I worked for the Social Security Administration handling disability cases.

In the initial stage, determinations of disability are made by agencies of the states, not by employees of the Social Security Administration, but the people reviewing the evidence are medical doctors.

If a claim is denied and is appealed to the hearing stage, the case is reviewed by an administrative law judge (ALJ). I prepared the written decisions for the ALJs based on their instructions. The ALJs have discretion to find disability in cases that had been denied, so they actually end up awarding disability to many claimants who were originally denied.

I think a major problem had been the cutbacks in staff. I worked in a unit staffed by 54 people. Many of us were retirement age and SSA was waiting for us to retire. They could not replace anyone until there were less than 25 people left in the unit. This has caused increased delays in handling disability cases.

There is no need for attorney representation, except the ALJs, being attorneys themselves, seemed to favor claimants who had attorneys.

The most important thing is for claimants to be consistent in their statements. Some ALJs looked for inconsistencies as a reason to deny disability.

[Historic NY]

32. I spent a little over 4 yrs and 2 appeals before my settlement...

my lawyers mother also a lawyer did the appeals of a ALJ who thought he was a Dr. A SS lawyer is only entitle to $5300 out of a settlement. She did not take her fee only a small sum to prepare the reports. She was in her 70's and very savvy as to medical terms & treatment. My brother who has copd, a knee replacement and needs another,has a ankle that is so bend he can barely walk on top of other medical problems just walked into a SS office and filed he has his first check in 6 months. Luck of the draw but things worked out. I sure yours will too.

[Poboy]

41. k&r