State operations that review claims face massive backlogs, leaving disabled Americans waiting months and even years for judgments.
“I wanted to help people,” recalled Shayla Williams, who worked in the office for two years until she quit in February. “But I was miserable. I’m getting paid $17.50 an hour to play doctor all day. It was not worth it.
Acting Social Security commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi declined to be interviewed for this story. In a statement, she said: “We are analyzing factors that are contributing to the backlog. It is a combination of complex issues.” She cited challenges to hiring in the tight labor market, “historically high attrition” in the state offices, increasing medical evidence that must be reviewed, and shortages of physicians to conduct outside medical exams and review cases.
New hires go through time-consuming background checks. Fully learning the job takes two or three years. And in recent years the work grew tougher: Now more evidence is required to back up a claim, and by 2020 the average number of pages in a case file had grown to 940 from 160 a decade earlier, federal auditors found.
States confronted an exodus of examiners and physicians, both contractors paid to examine claimants and staff who make final decisions on benefits. Yet instead of easing the mounting delays, Social Security’s decisions in Washington made the situation worse on the ground in many states. State directors blame Social Security for an ill-timed rollout they say resulted in severe delays to processing claims.
from her former bosses. “I would walk in there, and it was like there was a weight on my shoulders. The support just wasn’t there.” In Florida, QuikAid, a large-volume disability firm, has 11,000 pending claims, up from 3,000 in a typical year, chief executive David Wright said. One of them is Rusty Swain’s. Swain, 59, was a commercial electrician in Tampa when a collision with an I-beam on a construction site 10 years ago left him with severe neck and back injuries. After several surgeries, he has lost the use of his right arm and suffers from arthritis in his neck.
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