Filing and Winning Disability Cases: Is It Getting Harder?

We’ve been hearing “the sky is falling” for years, at least when it comes to Social Security disability. But is it possible that it’s actually true this time?

As this article from MSNBC.com makes clear, there are some new challenges an applicant for disability must face. Many of these challenges result from both short- and long-term effects of the U.S. economic crisis. Some are a result of an aging population.

One of most immediate problems is the effect of rampant and increasing rates of unemployment on the number of applications for disability. When older workers get laid off due to the economic downturn and cannot subsequently find employment, more and more they’re turning to Social Security disability to make up the shortfall in income. There’s already a documented 50% increase in the number of applications from ten years ago.

That increase in turn causes yet another problem: a serious backlog. It used to be that an applicant would wait approximately a year for a hearing on her appeal of an initial denial (and remember, most initial applications are denied). Now that timeframe has been extended to two years, and it may increase further.

Another problem is the growing threat of insolvency of the fund itself. This is simple math: the more applications received, the more approved applications, and the greater the amount of money flowing out to recipients.

What does this mean for you? Perhaps everything — perhaps not much. It may affect your chances at a successful outcome statistically speaking. Yet when it comes to filing for disability, statistics are just numbers and have nothing to do with any individual case. You shouldn’t let dire predictions alone talk you out of speaking to an attorney about filing  an application for disability. But it does make sense to educate yourself about the process. even though, as the process is continually evolving, that might be tougher than it used to be.