Front page of today's paper (Jacksonville, FL), big headline:
"Do you need disability benefits?
GET IN LINE"
In part, it states:
"Social Security is mired in a nationwide backlog of more than 760,000 pending disability cases, a total that has nearly doubled since 2001...
You have work going up, staff and funding levels going down. It doesn't take much to imagine what the outcome is.
Calling it a 'moral imperative' and the agency's 'highest priority' in federal documents, Social Security has launched an ambitious campaign to whittle the backlog to 466,000 by 2013 and cut the typical wait to get a ruling in half, to 270 days.
The overhaul includes hiring nearly 200 new administrative law judges nationwide, using a computer program to quickly decide clear-cut cases, increasing the use of video hearings, and moving from paper to electronic records.
By the end of September, the new measures had virtually wiped out the more than 63,000 cases that had been on the docket for more than 1,000 days. Next up are cases that have been around for more than 900 days."
I guess this falls under the heading of Good News, Bad News. 