Today’s San Jose Mercury writes that “the Social Security Disability Insurance system (SSDI) is crumbling under the pressure of a substantial disabled population, shrinking budgets and a wave of agency retirements. Social Security employees work as hard as they can to help people who deserve care, but their best efforts aren’t putting a dent in a hearing backlog of 765,000 disabled Americans — including 62,031 Californians — waiting months or years to receive their rightful benefits.
The recession is making things even worse. Commissioner Michael Astrue recently told the media the SSA is facing an unanticipated 10 percent increase in its disability claims caseload. That’s 250,000 additional cases the SSA needs to review, further bogging down the system.” See San Jose Mercury article here: