If you have been approved for Social Security disability benefits during the past year, you may have noticed that your favorable decision contains a statement from the judge directing Social Security to conduct a case review in either one year or three years from the date of the decision.
These orders for short term reviews are something of a new phenomenon. Prior to 2012 I think I saw this type of directive only once or twice. Now these orders are in almost every decision.
Social Security disability is running out of money. SSA administrators are addressing this shortfall by:
- encouraging judges to only approve cases where there is objective evidence of disability
- carefully reviewing the approval/denial statistics of judges
- moving to terminate the contracts of judges with extremely high approval rates
- informally encouraging judges to keep approval rates to a 30 to 40% range
- increasing funding for continuing disability reviews [Read more…] about Should You be Concerned About a Continuing Disability Review