SOCIAL SECURITY QUIETLY MAKES IT HARDER TO GET BENEFITS

A new study confirms what we already knew:  Social Security has quietly made it much more difficult to get disability benefits, including Medicare.

"If you make it harder, people just run out of gas," said Richard Browdie, chief executie of the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland.  "There are a whole bunch ofnew impediments, and I think the process has become overly restrictive," Browdie says.

Starting around 2010, Social Security singled out the better paying judges, the ones who awarded a higher percentage of claims on appeal, and "retrained" them.  In fact, these judges were taught how to deny claims instead of approving them.  The result was that awards dropped from 69 percent in 2008 to 49 percent in 2015. This re-education program cost claimants billions of dollars in lost benefits.

By 2017, the approval rate for appeals dropped to 42 percent--a whopping 27 percent decline in approvals in the ten-year period.

In addition to "retraining" administrative law judges (teaching them how to deny claims), Social Security also adopted more restrictive regulations and policies designed to give judges more power to deny claims.

For example, the old rules required that a claimant's treating doctor's opinion be given more weight than the opinion of a doctor who had never seen or treated the claimant, i.e., a Social Security doctor.  Effective May 27, 2017, the rule was revised to allow the administrative law judge discretion to accept the opinion of any doctor--even one who has never met or examined the claimant.

I am now presenting opinions from claimants doctors who have treated them for 15 or 20 years and say that their medical restrictions prevent them from being able to work, only to have judges accept the opinion of a Social Security who have examined the claimant one time, briefly at that, and say the claimant has "no restrictions" and can work at 300,000 different jobs.  These doctors are paid by Social Security.

All this to say that Social Security is in a fiscal panic, fueled by two things:  (1) Actuaries who predict that the Social Security trust fund will lose its ability to pay out full benefits by 2027, and (2) media outcries that Social Security is full of fraud and abuse and that it has become "the new welfare."  Politicians and bureaucrats get scared silly when the media cries wolf!  They react by illogical reactions, such as gutting the Social Security disability program--the only lifeline for millions of poorly educated, poorly trained Americans who depend on unskilled manual labor to earn a meager living.  When these individuals become unable to perform arduous physical work because of medical impairments, they have nothing left but Social Security disability.

We lose sight of one fundamental truth in all this:  that Social Security disability is a government mandated insurance program that workers actually pay for.  A Social Security tax (called FICA) is deducted from every paycheck a worker earns at a rate of approximately 7.5 percent of gross wages.  The employer matches it with another tax of 7.5 percent.  So, for every dollar a worker earns--during his or her entire working lifetime--15 cents of it is contributed to the Social Security trust fund.  When a worker becomes disabled, he is not asking for a handout, or welfare, or a free government benefit.  He is asking the federal government to pay up on an insurance policy they forced him to purchase and pay for.

The government is glad to take 15 percent of the worker's wages but has become increasingly reluctant to give any promised benefit in return.  It's equivalent to an insurance company taking hour premiums for 30 years, then refusing to pay off when you have a legitimate claim under the policy.

How do you fight back?  You do just that, you fight.  When your claim is denied, you lawyer up--and file a legal appeal.  In Alabama, you have the following 3 legal appeals available to you when Social Security refuses to pay your disability claim:

APPEAL 1:  Ask for a hearing by an administrative law judge.  True, the award rate here has fallen from 69 percent in 2008 to a mere 42 percent in 2017 but this is still your best chance of getting your benefit.

APPEAL 2:  If the retrained judge denies your claim, ask for a review by the Appeals Council (AC).  There are still some rules that judges must follow and if they fail to do so, your case may be remanded by the AC.

APPEAL 3:  If the Appeals Council will not give you relief, you have the right to file a lawsuit in Federal District Court against the Commissioner of Social Security.  This is really your last practical appeal.

The tightening of Social Security rules has had a trickle down effect on disability attorneys and advocates--legal champions who fought to get their clients benefits.  For example, the largest advocacy group in the nation, Binder and Binder in New York filed for bankruptcy and laid off most of its staff. Hundreds of other attorneys simply stopped handling Social Security cases because it became so difficult to win a case and get paid. 

But...there are still some good advocates and attorneys who will fight for the rights of the disabled--and there always will be.  Make no mistake, the effort to get disability benefits is a fight.  You must realize this and go into the process with the best disability advocate you can find.