Quote:
Originally Posted by Janke
So people who don't have insurance and have little to no medical records should not qualify for disability benefits? Sorry, you are denied because you can't afford to see a doctor. I don't think that is a good idea. And what about the doctor's office that haven't bought into this program? People who see those doctors should be denied because their records are not electronic?
And if you believe that the only people filing what you call bogus claims are those with no medical records, you are incorrect. There are people who work for years with medical problems and only stop when they can't drag themselves to work anymore. Then there are people who call in sick over any minor problem and think that someone owes them money because of an inconvenience. And on the claims that take 'years', a decision was made in the beginning that they were not disabled. It takes years because of the appeal process. A person may believe they are disabled, but it doesn't mean that their problems meet the legal definition.
And 90% of the disability files are now electronic so there is no travel time for the folder to go to another office and all the documents are available to anyone who looks at it. Electronic claim files don't get lost and can be transferred instantly to anywhere in the country. So if one part of the US has a big backlog (because of state furloughs) another part of the US can take that work on. SSA is already gets some medical files through an electronic system.
Also, your local office has a great deal more business to take care of on a daily basis that is not related to a finding of disability. If the disability analysts were physically moved to the local office, your local office would probably have to move to a new building to be able to house the new employees. I do think that the disability analyst should be a federal employee and not a state employee, but the logistics of changing that are immense.
I do think that we are in the electronic era and can't stop the ball from rolling downhill, but I am a little bit nervous about the amount of personal information about me that is readily available to so many people.
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I did not mean for this to sound like that, I understand that some people can't afford to go to a doctor. There are sources out there for these people and if a person is actually disabled it would be documented. Now whether or not SSA would accept this documentation, I don’t know. I believe that SSA should have to provide some kind of assistance to people in this category to see a doctor at no cost to the claimant. But you know as well as anyone else, there are some people that are not really disabled. They just can't find a decent paying job or they just simply don't want to work for a living. I personally know several people in this category that are healthy as a horse. And some of them even get SSDI benefits. This is whats clogging up the system. And in reference to some doctors not using this program; the federal government has put up billions of dollars in funding for hospitals and doctor's with private practices to upgrade their systems for the purpose of sharing medical information about their patients to other doctors and most of them are jumping up and down to get part of this funding. This program is supposedly secure so that only people with proper authorization can access it. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care who can see my medical records, it's not like they could use it to steal my identity or use the info to hurt me in any way, I don't guess.