Why is your Social Security Disability case taking so long to process?
Let us talk about what’s going on with the SSA, and why the time to process Social Security disability cases has jumped by about six months to a year longer to go from start to finish.
The first thing that happened is the SSA is facing budgetary restraints. They’re not able to hire all the staff, they need to process all the claims that they have. And it has really slowed down the process. It’s been a gradual problem, really over the last decade that really hasn’t been addressed.
All those problems became far worse after the second problem of COVID.
Once COVID happened, all of the Social Security offices shut down. You know, there were no in-person appointments available at local Social Security disability offices, all the hearing offices shut down and change to online hearings instead of in-person hearings. The Social Security offices have since opened up, you can go to your local office now and there are in-person hearings available, but this cause just a massive backlog in the processing of claims. And there were all sorts of technological difficulties with the over-the-phone hearings, as opposed to the in-person ones that cause just delays and hearings to have to be rescheduled. And SSA hasn’t dug themselves out of that hole. And since they’re still dealing with the staffing crisis, it’s very hard for them to play catch up just because they don’t have the manpower to do so which is very unfortunate. A lot of social security disability cases from all over the country have been lingering for far longer than they have in the past. And for people that need those benefits. It’s incredibly painful. I have to have conversations with my clients frequently more often than I’d like to go over. You know, there’s not a lot that can be done to speed cases up and this is just kind of the state of things whenever you apply for Social Security disability in the present age.