The SSDI program, which paid roughly $130 billion in benefits to 10.6 million people in 2011, is projected to exhaust its reserves by 2017. The agency has already launched a review to address wide discrepancies in how disability benefits are awarded, prompted in part by the Journal’s reporting on the topic throughout the year.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal described how some employees at Binder & Binder, based in Hauppauge, N.Y., allegedly withheld key medical information from the government about disability applicants represented by the firm. Sen. Tom Coburn has requested that the Social Security Administration review the health status of people represented by a legal firm that is facing scrutiny for its handling of disability cases.
The SSA is expected to publish a new policy to tighten control of firms such as Binder & Binder that represent people seeking benefits.
In the article, five former Binder employees said staffers would routinely withhold medical information if it might hurt a client’s case, such as assertions from a doctor that the client could still work or could lift heavy objects. Shielding such data from government adjudicators could increase the client’s chance of winning benefits, but it also could violate federal law.
Binder & Binder declined to comment Thursday. A person close to the firm’s management has previously denied that it withheld key medical information.
Reviewing the disability status of all of Binder & Binder’s former clients would be a sizable undertaking. The firm helps more than 10,000 clients win disability benefits each year, according to some estimates.
The Social Security disability program was created in the 1950s to help Americans who were no longer able to work. Applicants can qualify for financial and health-care assistance if they can prove that physical or mental disabilities prevent them from holding gainful employment. A few years ago, Congress boosted incentives to encourage law firms to enter the business as a way of helping applicants navigate the bureaucracy.
The SSA’s new disability rules would make it easier for the agency to ban representatives who withhold certain medical data, according to a draft of the regulations. The rules were first proposed in 2008 but never implemented, creating some confusion over which standards applied.