Lag time in assistance is unconscionable

The good folks at The Associated Press crunched the numbers to find that those hit with a disability and looking for help aren’t getting it in any way like they should. The AP’s findings reveal an unconscionable problem that needs to be addressed, and in

More than 1 million people are waiting to see whether they qualify for cash assistance from the Social Security Administration.

Many of them are hardworking Americans brought down by injury or illness. Suddenly without a job, facing medical pressures and stacks of bills, the average wait for Social Security to rule on whether they qualify has grown to nearly two years.

As AP journalist Stephen Ohlemacher notes in his report, the wait is longer than some of them will even live. As of last year, 7,400 people already dead remained on wait lists.

Consider the case of Chris Shuler. Working as an airplane mechanic, he developed severe respiratory problems after an exposure to chemicals. Shuler’s wife, Elizabeth, described a nightmare scenario in which the medication he took hurt his bones. Not even 40, Shuler needed two hip replacements.

But when he applied for assistance in 2012, he was rejected. He died from infection in July 2015 while his request remained on appeal. (Four months later a judge sided with the family.)

Presently, about 10.5 million people get disability payments. The money comes from taxes pulled from worker paychecks as part of the larger Social Security retirement system.

Another 8 million get payments from the Supplemental Security Income program that gets its support from the broader federal budget.

Combined, the payments amounted to $197 billion last year.

That’s a lot of money, and it means that the administration must perform due diligence in assessing claims of disability.

Earlier this year The Washington Post reported that between 1996 and 2015 the number of adults receiving payments rose from 7.7 million to 13 million. Especially in impoverished rural areas, The Post found families two and three generations deep that live on disability payments. An average of 9.1 percent of working-age people are on disability in rural areas — a rate much higher than their urban counterparts and 40 percent higher than the national average.

Despite the meager assistance provided — an average of $1,037 a month — there is clearly abuse of the well-intentioned system, and Social Security is right to seek to ferret it out.

A result is that two-thirds of those applying for disability are rejected outright. Appeals to that rejection require seeing an administrative law judge, and that takes an average of 602 days.

Five years ago, waits were less than a year.

About 1.1 million people are waiting for such a hearing. That’s a 31 percent increase from 2012, though down slightly from last year.

Budget cuts over the years have reduced the staff needed to do the work.

Now Social Security is asking for 500 new administrative law judges and more than 600 support staff.

President Donald Trump inherited this situation, and no doubt the dynamic helped fuel his supporters’ anxieties that the federal government no longer cares about them.

We humbly suggest this is a perfect, though complex problem for his administration to address.