What does the social security disability and ssi appeals process involve ?

If you file for disability benefits and get denied on your initial claim (as most applicants for disability benefits do), then you will be faced with the prospect of entering into the appeals process and system established by SSA (social security administration).

What does entering into the appeals process entail? Unfortunately, it involves a lot of waiting. In fact, claims for SSDI (social security disability insurance) and SSI (supplemental security income) that go into the "appeals bottleneck" tend to get stuck there for periods of many months.

For example, after a request for a disability hearing has been made, it may take well over a year, depending on where you reside (the social security administration has hearings offices in multiple locations of all states), to get a hearing before a federal judge scheduled. And, in some parts of the country, can take as long as two years to get a hearing date after one has been requested.

Why does it take so long to get a disability hearing? Simply because the disability system is literally backed up with disability cases and each office of hearings and appeals has a considerable backlog to deal with. Unfortunately, this is a state of affairs that the social security administration is doing little to alleviate (the solution is actually very simple: hire more personnel to move cases faster--at the federal level, this would mean more social security field office personnel and more clerks at the various hearings offices; at the state level, it would mean more funding for the various state Disability Determination Services to hire more disability examiners).

Sadly, because the social security disability and ssi disability system has been so "effectively mismanaged", disabled individuals who are trying to win their benefits are now routinely being put through the financial ringer. With little to zero income available while they wait on their claims (that seem to have disappeared into a paperwork black hole), they are often put in the position of having to sit back and watch while their savings dry up and their possessions are repossessed or foreclosed on. To add insult to injury, the typical social security or SSI claimant will have exhausted his or her medical insurance long before the appeals process has run its course. And without access to care and prescriptions, many such claimants will face a downward spiral with regard to their health and well-being. For information on how to start the disability appeals process, proceed to this link.






Starting the disability appeals process