Appealing denied Social Security Benefits

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University released a new report, Social Security Awards Depend More on Judge than Facts: Disparities Within SSA Disability Hearing Offices Grow. The report utilized a court-by-court analysis of close to two million Social Security Administration (SSA) claims ; documented extensive; hard-to-explain disparities in the way the administrative law judges (ALJs) within the agency's separate hearing offices decide whether individuals will be granted or denied disability benefits. Social Security Administration officials, however, have called the study "unsupported grandstanding." From the report: “For example, during the very recent October 2009 — March 2011 period, the Texas SSA office in Dallas (North) had 15 administrative judges on its staff who had each decided 100 or more cases. … the SSA records indicate that the judge grant rates in this single location ranged across a full spectrum: from less than 10 percent being granted to over 90 percent. Yet, as discussed previously, because the incoming cases are by law assigned in rotation, the kinds of matters coming to each judge should have contained approximately the same number of creditable claimants…. This report documents very serious problems in the operations of a major federal agency with a vast impact, for good and ill, on the lives of millions of individuals"   The Dallas; San Antonio offices rank number; 2 in the country in having the highest disparities in claims. Read the full report at: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/ssa/254/.