Due to an increase in the number of Social Security applicants, which has a lot to do with the baby boomers’ generation, hundreds of thousands of applicants are now waiting as long as three years to find out if they qualify. This backlog is causing many people to lose homes, declare bankruptcy or even die while waiting for approval.

The Social Security Administration (SSA), in attempts to whittle down the backlog, developed a plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to handle the appeals from rejected applicants. The plan, which requires an additional $100 million in funding, has been delayed until Congress and the White House can come to a decision.

“The backlog is prolonging the suffering of the most vulnerable people at the most critical time in their lives,” Rick Fleming, James Scott Farrin’s Social Security lawyer, said. “We’ve had people die, we’ve had people lose their home, we’ve had people whose spouse left them because they couldn’t stand all that it was causing – the financial wreck, bankruptcy.”

The backlog was 311,000 in 2000, but has increased to 755,000 by 2007. The increase is attributed in part to the baby boomers’ generation reaching the age to apply for social security disability, but it is also attributed to the lack of staff.

Social security disability applicants must prove they have physical or mental disabilities that prevents them from “any kind of substantial work” for at least one year, or prove their illness is expected “to result in death.”

About 2.5 million people apply for social security benefits each year, two-thirds of which are denied. Of the applicants left, 575,000 file appeals; two-thirds eventually win a reversal.

But the increasing delays in the appeals process have caused litigation and financing shortages, which prevent the hiring of new administrative judges.

One social security disability lawyer said about one client a month has died while waiting an appeals hearing. Many clients run out of money or are evicted. In the past, an applicant’s case was expedited when he/she received a foreclosure warning; now, because of the backlog, cases are only expedited after receiving an eviction notice, when it is usually too late to help.

The backlog in social security disability cases have also created an extra burden on state agencies. In New York, nearly half of the 38,000 applicants wait for an average of 21 months, and receive cash and assistance from the state in the meantime.

Source: Erik Eckholm, “Disability cases last longer as backlog rises,” New York Times, December 10, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/us/10disability.html).