The sheer size of the Social Security Administration is a fundamental problem in dealing with it. With more than 57,000 employees, including a separate Office of Disability Adjudication and Review covering about 8,000 employees, 1,300 law and 34 administrative appeals judges, and 14,000 state agency employees who constantly determine disability benefits below hearing levels. It is daunting enough for a lawyer to figure out whom and what to contact about a claimant’s particular case; but, without a lawyer, this process can be confusing and overwhelming.
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Social Complexity
Size is exacerbated by program complexity in regards to its two main disability programs, Disability and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). With constant program changes, ensuring that everyone within the administration receives the correct information is, more than enough, impossible. To explain: a test of the SSA nationwide toll-free number showed 25% wrong answers to questions involving SSI. The toll-free number is most useful for information about retirement programs, not disability benefit entitlements.
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Flexibility and Rigidity
Like every bureaucracy, Social Security attempts to develop routines for complex decisions. However, this never bodes well for disability determinations below administrative hearing levels because of complex medical-vocational issues and lack of equipment from state agencies. The states’ disability determinations tend to be inadequate, and many people within the administration remain almost blissfully unaware of such shortcomings. In addition, tendencies exist where low-level bureaucrats to follow rules rigidly, even if rule applications are logical at all; as a result, this claimants’ and lawyers’ grips on the case.
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However, Tom Bush and the Milwaukee Disability Attorney Law Firm can help claimants navigate through this chaotic process with ease, efficiency, and timeless results with our four-step process: case reviews, obtaining documentation, hearing preparation, and persuasion.
