Lankford: SSDI Process Flawed From the Start

Press Release

Representative James Lankford (R-OK), Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements, expressed cautious optimism for addressing areas for improvement to protect Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) from insolvency at today's Oversight Subcommittee hearing. The hearing entitled, "Examining Ways the Social Security Administration Can Improve the Disability Review Process," featured testimony from Oklahoman Jennifer Lockhart, state director for Sooner SUCCESS.

Today's hearing focused on the continuing disability review (CDR) process, especially for children.

"Social Security Disability Insurance is headed for insolvency by 2016. It is my duty to provide oversight to ensure we do what we can to prevent the failure of our Disability fund," said Lankford.

"If an individual's Disability status improves to the point he or she is no longer disabled, we must ensure we can adjust Disability benefits accordingly to encourage Americans who are physically able to work to seek employment. The problem is that the process by which individuals are determined to be disabled is flawed from the outset."

Between 2005-2012, SSA reported that 930,250 individuals were awarded Disability benefits in Region 3, which includes the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware. The Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who awarded those benefits had an 80% allowance rate for beneficiaries. Among the 930,250 individuals, roughly 350,000 were awarded Disability payments by ALJs who have more than 90% allowance rates.

"Our first series of hearings focused on congressional oversight of ALJs who determine Disability status based on a rubber stamp rather than actual disabled status," continued Lankford. "ALJ determinations are made only after two state Disability Determination Services (DDS) reviewers have denied benefits to the individual. Yet, roughly one-third of ALJs have a skeptically high 80-90% allowance rate. That, alone, raises red flags all over the place.

"Our hearing today focused on addressing the reasons for the CDR backlog and why it is so difficult to move beyond Disability Insurance. American workers want to stand on their own two feet. When they aren't able to do that because of a crisis in their health, we have state and federal safety nets to help them through that time period. One of the issues with the Disability safety net is that individuals are not necessarily disabled when they begin receiving benefits, so it is very difficult for the next phase, the CDR process, to indicate improvement.

"Our witness testimony today helped us better understand the situation facing SSA in their CDR process. In FY14, Congress appropriated additional funds for CDR reviewers to help reduce the CDR backlog. As usual, though, throwing money at the problem is not the only solution. We expect SSA will take what we exposed in today's hearing and adjust their CDR process to better empower able-bodied individuals to support their families," concluded Lankford.

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