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OUR EDITORIAL BOARD'S OPINION
Social Security’s clogged pipeline Disability claims languish, with thousands paying a dire price

By Mike King
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, August 21, 2008
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o.../disabled.html

Mired in a Nixon-era process and underfunded for more than a decade, the system for deciding whether Americans qualify for disability benefits under Social Security needs to be fixed, and fixed quickly.

With the first wave of 80 million baby boomers beginning to fall into the Social Security safety net, Congress and the White House can’t put off a major reform of the disability claims process any longer.

Nationwide, the system has a backlog of 761,000 claims in the pipeline, with about 22,000 in the Atlanta region alone. On average, applicants in the Atlanta region now wait more than two years to find out whether they qualify for disability benefits, one of the worst service records for any region in the country.

That level is service is simply unacceptable. Besides providing income for those unable to work, Social Security disability opens the door for medical coverage under Medicare and Medicaid for people who have no jobs and are uninsured. The bureaucratic wait is so long that some applicants die while waiting for the disability claims to be adjudicated, while others are merely impoverished by the process.

Of course, taxpayers fund the Social Security system, and they do need protection against fraudulent disability claims. However, data indicate that the process seems stacked against even those who are obviously disabled. More than 2.6 million Americans will file disability claims this year, fueled by the baby boom generation reaching an age where chronic illness and injury can make it difficult, if not impossible, to hold a job. Applicants must show that they cannot work for at least a year.

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