Florida Special Needs Lawyer & Attorney : David J. Lillesand : Lillesand & Wolasky Law Firm : Disability, Medicaid, Special Needs Trusts : Miami, Gainesville, Florida

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If you've ever wondered how the Social Security Administration decides whether a person is disabled, look here.

If you've wondered what are the steps to get disability, look here, and note the length of time between each step.

If you're absolutely bewildered by the length of time it takes to get a hearing before a federal Administrative Law Judge, read some of the entries on NOSSCR's collection of news and editorials on the scandal (scroll down on the web-page to see the articles).  Last year, SSA judges heard 550,000 cases.  Unfortunately, the backlog grew to 750,000 severely disabled people waiting to get a hearing.

In the 1990's we had a system in place that moved the cases much more quickly.  But that was before all the tax cuts and then the staff cuts - eliminating or not replacing judges, secretaries, and other staff.  We are now operating with a Social Security staff workforce that is the same size as when John Kennedy was president, and the population was 179 million, not the 304 million we have now.

You can't have a hearing without a judge.  And a judge can only hear 15-20 cases per week.  Less judges means long, long delays waiting for a judge to be assigned and your hearing to be scheduled by SSA.

More funding, more judges, more judges, less delay in getting a hearing.  Write your congressman!

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On July 19, 2008, we will all have access to a new Internet tool courtesy of the Social Security Administration.  It is called the benefit estimator, and will allow each of us to secure a reasonably accurate estimate, online, of our Social Security retirement or disability benefit monthly check amount. 

The benefit estimator will use live SSA records to make the calculations.  We will have to enter some identifying information on the SSA website for authentication purposes.  We will then be able to check out different scenarios and see how our benefits would be impacted, such as taking early retirement at age 62, or waiting to full retirement age, such as age 66 or 67.

Check SSA's main web-pageafter July 19th for instructions.

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Until recently, if you wanted to see what SSA was up to in terms of proposing new regulations, you would go to policy information page on the Social Security Administration's main website.

Under a new policy, all federal agencies' proposed regulations, and other announcements, will appear on a new website called Regulations.gov.  One of the neat things about the website, is that we can sign up for notification of any new proposed regulations by whatever agency we're interested in.  We will be sent an email.

This is an important development because it makes it easier to alert the public so that timely comments can be made to proposed regulations before they are adopted.  These NPRM items, "Notice of Proposed Rule Making" are published in the Federal Register pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act.  But wading through the Federal Register every day or each week is tedious.  Now the Internet will do it for us!