รายละเอียดกระทู้

Ken Collins/for the Times-Standard http://www.times-standard.com/guest_opinion/ci_23001947/you-dont-reform-disability-benefits-by-targeting-disabled There's been a lot of news lately about the Social Security disability system, including from the usually reliable NPR, which recently aired a piece on KHSU-FM titled “Unfit for Work: The Startling Rise of Disability in America.” The articles have left a sour taste, implying that many people are scamming the system and are undeserving of disability benefits. This is not my experience. I am an attorney and have been specializing in helping people fight for their benefits in Humboldt County for the last 14 years, so I am not a neutral or uninvolved observer. But I can offer a view from the trenches. This system certainly needs reform, but not by attacking the claimants who are the most physically and mentally damaged people in our society. Instead, we need a system that more fairly evaluates their conditions. What I see every day is a system that is so complicated and is so stacked against the disability claimant that it is unrealistically difficult to try to appeal a denial without the help of an attorney that specializes in just this kind of law. You shouldn't need an attorney to access your own benefits from your own government, but the system uses its own language and standards. If you don't know an RFC from an SVP, you are in trouble. The disability standards are very strict and are unevenly applied. Only one-third of disability applicants are approved at the initial level and after all appeals to all court levels are considered, 60 percent of adult applicants are denied. Social Security sends these claimants to contract doctors who know just exactly how to evaluate the claimant so they will be denied. These doctors routinely do not receive medical records including tests like MRIs and X-rays, nor do they usually see treatment records. Sometimes they do not even perform the tests they claim prove my clients are not disabled. Once the claimant gets to a hearing before an administrative law judge, the most critical factor isn't the medical records or the client's testimony. It is which judge is assigned to the case. Nationwide, there is a range from judges that grant less than 15 percent of the cases before them to ones that grant over 90 percent. Locally, Humboldt County cases are heard by judges that vary from 30 percent approvals to 85 percent. Which would you want? If they do receive benefits, many are subjected to a continuing disability review, sometimes within a year or two. Then the contract doctors are used, who often say the person is no longer disabled. So the fight starts up again. And at that point, it is next to impossible to find attorneys willing to help, since there is no back pay to pay them. Yes, the number of people applying for and receiving disability benefits is increasing. This is not surprising as our population ages. In addition, women who have entered the work force since the 1970s are now applying for disability insurance benefits, since they are now eligible through their mandatory contributions to the program. Much of the increase in children's SSI applicants is caused by increasing poverty, as the income disparity in our country grows every year. The news articles fail to grasp these factors and instead naively accept simplistic cartoon arguments. The NPR article was so distorted that on April 4, eight former commissioners of Social Security issued a letter saying, “We are deeply concerned that the series 'Unfit for Work' failed to tell the whole story and perpetuated dangerous myths about the Social Security disability programs and the people helped by this vital system. We fear that listeners may come away with an incorrect impression of the program -- as opposed to an understanding of the program actually based on facts.” My greater concern is that the applicants for disability benefits are unfairly treated and inappropriately denied. I have no doubt that the true measure of our society is how we care for our children, the elderly, and the disabled. By that measure, we are failing. We seem to have developed a field sport of attacking the homeless, the poor, and the mentally and physically disabled for the budget woes of our government. I have a sneaky suspicion that this blame is misplaced.