…A case in point is the worsening bureaucratic delays at the chronically underfunded Social Security Administration which have kept hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans from timely receipt of their Social Security disability benefits.
… the backlog of applicants who are awaiting a decision after appealing an initial rejection has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000. The average wait for an appeals hearing now exceeds 500 days, twice as long as applicants had to wait in 2000.
Typically two-thirds of those who appeal eventually win their cases. But during the long wait, their conditions may worsen and their lives often fall apart. More and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing. See Editorial here:
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