Do we really need more SSDI judges?

In the last couple of days, both the NY Times and the Washington Post have addressed the backlog in the SSDI system and the need for more judges.  730,000 applicants are still waiting to get the benefits they need and deserve.

If the judges they currently have would stop playing games with applicants, they could process more files. My application has been appealed and re-appealed and re-re-appealed since 2000. In the time that it has taken for them to keep turning down someone who even their own VocRehab expert says cannot work, they could have processed several additional applicants and worked through the backlog.

But I’ve heard from several people inside the system that benefits don’t necessarily go to the sickest, but to the most persistent. The sickest tend to miss deadlines or give up because they don’t need the stress. (This is why I turned mine over to a lawyer – she’s healthy, so she won’t miss a deadline, and the only stress I have from the process is the financial stress of not having a reliable income for the past 7 years.)

This is something our elected officials have to hear about: how much time and money is wasted by the system in playing these head games with legitimately disabled applicants. From my very first hearing, SSDI’s own VocRehab experts have repeatedly said I cannot work, and each time, the judge has chosen to ignore his own expert.

The fastest and easiest way to clear up that 3/4 million person backlog is to assign some clerical employees to review the files with one goal in mind: if there is a doctor's report or a VocRehab expert saying the person cannot work, then the payments should be automatically approved, on a wholly objective basis.  No room for the judge's opinion that CFS/fibro patients are not as deserving as someone with a different diagnosis.

The amount of money that has been wasted on judges, experts, and government lawyers to keep hearing the same testimony in my case would have paid my benefits for a few years.  Where's the outrage over this government waste?

Tags: SSDI, disability, judge, Congress