Social Security’s Plan to Restore Lost Benefits Snarled in Red Tape

Wallace Dorsey’s days as a construction laborer were cut short in 1979 when he suffered a stroke that left him permanently disabled.

Like other Americans forced to quit work because of injury or illness, Dorsey, 55, began receiving payments to support his wife and five children through the Social Security disability insurance program.

However, under a new Reagan Administration policy, his case was reviewed in early 1982. And although the South-Central Los Angeles man was blind in one eye and had poor dexterity in both hands, Social Security officials concluded--against the testimony of his doctors--that he was able to do some work. In August, his monthly checks for $636 were halted.

His benefits were restored a year later with the help of legal aid attorneys, but it was too late to help Dorsey. He had moved out of the bedroom of his modest stucco home, and started ignoring longtime friends. Then, he suffered several more strokes. He died the day after Christmas.

“The system,” said his widow, Beatrice, “killed him.”

Such stories were repeated nationwide after the Social Security Administration began the unprecedented task of reviewing more than 1.1 million disability recipients in late 1981. Stories of children going hungry, of hopeless men and women committing suicide and of sickly people being mistakenly deprived of their benefits outraged members of Congress, and even some in the Reagan Administration.

After unanimous congressional action, Reagan last October signed into law the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act, which makes it harder for the government to cut off a disabled worker’s benefits.

Now the federal bureaucracy is gearing up to help undo some of the mistakes and restore benefits to as many as 500,000 Americans, including 35,000 Californians and residents of seven other Western states.

Already, this plan is running into problems of its own.

To publicize the new review, Social Security officials plan to begin a mass mailing on Feb. 15 to tens of thousands of the people who were cut off between 1981 and 1984, when U.S. Health and Welfare Secretary Margaret Heckler halted the reviews in anticipation of congressional action.

The certified notices--the Administration expects to mail at least 100,000--will inform disabled workers that they may reapply for their monthly checks.

But there are a number of difficulties in notifying former recipients. For one thing, many disabled workers have moved since their benefits were terminated. For another, the Administration is still in the process of drawing up new medical guidelines for who qualifies. Although many applicants will have their benefits temporarily restored after applying, it could take up to three months for the checks to go out--and a beneficiary could later be cut off once again.

And, as if to add insult to injury, some people whose benefits have since been restored could be notified that their benefits are being reviewed, officials concede.

“We know that there will be considerable administrative difficulty in sending out the notices because many people have moved,” said a key aide to the House subcommittee on Social Security. “But we still expect them to act expeditiously.”

Los Angeles attorney Ellen Finkelberg, who has handled numerous disability cutoff cases, put it this way: “Every case for me is a race. It’s trying to get an individual get on or getting them signed up before they die. I average two deaths a month.”

The Social Security disability program was set up by Congress in 1954 to help disabled workers who have put in at least five years of work. Funded through payroll deductions, the program continued growing until it now costs $17.5 billion annually; the government receives up to 400,000 claims a year.

Shocked by a General Accounting Office report that perhaps 20% of the 4 million beneficiaries could go back to work, Congress and the Reagan Administration in 1981 ordered a thorough review in hopes of saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Ultimately, about 500,000 people had their checks stopped. (Officials are not certain how many of those have been put back on the rolls, but one congressman estimates it as approximately 200,000.)

“There were a lot of problems and we made some mistakes . . . and we’ve admitted that,” Social Security spokesman Jim Brown said.

“We never intended the Administration to review 1 million cases and cut off 40%,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who sits on the Social Security panel. “But that’s what they did.” Congress will now exercise “considerable oversight” of the restoration process, he added.

Although there is an appeals process for cutoffs, it seemed to make little difference to officials carrying out the reviews, said attorney Elena Ackel of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “Getting reviewed was the same thing as being terminated,” she stated.

The very process of sending out the new notices reminds some legal aid lawyers of what they view as past Social Security insensitivity. Congress, in ordering benefits restored, did not impose a deadline, and some critics are suspicious of the Administration’s self-imposed plan to start sending out notices next month.

“The act was passed last September and signed into law in October and still nothing has come from Social Security,” Ackel said. “People need their checks now .”

In some cases, Ackel noted, former recipients--unable to keep up with mortgage payments because of the cutoffs--have moved and the notices won’t catch up with them. Rather than wait for the notices, Ackel and Finkelberg instruct their clients to go immediately to a local Social Security office to reapply.

Even before the reform act became law, the Social Security bureaucracy moved slowly in cases where a disability recipient lost his benefits by mistake, Ackel said.

Orlenza Young, for example, tried to appeal a 1983 notice terminating his monthly benefits of $500. There was one problem--officials lost his file, and his lawyers said it took almost two years before new records could be created.

A maintenance worker in South-Central Los Angeles, Young had fallen into a trash bin, injuring his back. After he lost his assistance, Young said, he turned to relatives to help pay the rent. This month, he received notice that his aid is being restored.

“It was pretty rough,” Young, 48, said of the long wait. “If I could work, I’d be up and gone.” He is still waiting for the first check.

Machinist Herman Twaite was receiving $1,399 in monthly benefits for neck and head injuries after his car was rammed by a bus in 1976. The Bellflower resident said he has not had a painless, uninterrupted night of sleep since the accident. In January, 1982, he also lost his benefits.

“I worked for 17 years and I was proud to have Social Security taken out for my old age. But I didn’t make it to old age,” said Twaite, 42. “Why should they complain when I need it for my wife, my three daughters and myself?”

As a result of the cutoff, Twaite said, at one point he fed one of his daughters popcorn for breakfast. That’s when he sought legal help.

Twaite is one of about 35,000 people in California and eight Western states who were represented in a class-action lawsuit seeking restoration of disability payments. Early last year, a federal appeals court ordered these benefits restored, and castigated Social Security officials for “flouting” and “evading” the law by cutting benefits without proving that the medical condition of recipients had improved.

All of these people will be receiving the federal notices as well.

The notices could lead to retroactive payments--for up to 4 1/2 years in some cases. The recipient will be asked to go to a local Social Security office to reapply and present all pertinent evidence, including medical data from a physician. Subsequent hearings are likely before a final determination is made.

Social Security spokesman Brown says the agency is doing the best it can under the circumstances.

“What people don’t understand is, this has never been done before,” he said. “It’s very difficult for people to understand the law. If you feel you’re disabled, you believe it with all your heart. You may not agree with a finding that you’re still able to work.”

“In some cases, people said they couldn’t go back to work, but that was to the job they had before. But there was insufficient evidence (in some cases) to say that a person could not work at all.”

Federal judges ruled in several lawsuits that substantial medical improvement had to be shown before a person’s disability payments could be stopped. “The problem is, that was not part of the (original) law,” Brown said. “One doctor could say you’re able to work and another could say you couldn’t work at all.

“The Social Security (Administration) has done a good job of processing the laws that Congress has enacted,” he said. “And in the cases where mistakes were made, we’ve said we are sorry for that.”

Under the new law, consultation with such groups as the American Medical Assn. will result in better guidelines to decide cases, the administration maintains. Yet Social Security officials say they have no idea when those guidelines will be ready.

It was under similarly fuzzy conditions that the payments to many disabled workers like Wallace Dorsey were halted.

Beatrice Dorsey, who supports her family on the Social Security disability checks of her late husband, says she had gotten over the rage and bitterness she used to feel toward the government.

“I just want him back,” she said. “I miss him daily.”