MIAMI -- Diabetes, arthritis and open-heart surgery have kept Sherice Bennett from working, but she can't afford her medicine and became homeless while waiting more than two years for a chance to convince a judge that she qualifies for federal disability benefits.
Maria Ruiz also is waiting to appeal her denial; meanwhile, she's been in and out of psychiatric wards since being diagnosed as bipolar and hasn't been able to buy her medication since August.
Still others die waiting. One man had already been dead for two months this summer before his request for a hearing reached the desk of Miami Judge Thomas Snook. He ultimately approved the claim, and the man's spouse will collect his benefits.
Overburdened administrative judges are working through huge caseloads of these appeals all over America, but Miami has the country's longest average wait for a hearing, at 22 months. While they wait, many slip into poverty, burdening their families and dragging down the economy. Experts blame the number of aging baby boomers for the backlog, which piled up after the Social Security Administration got $1 billion less in funding than it sought for more staff.
The roughly $126 billion Social Security disability program, funded through payroll taxes, keeps many of America's most vulnerable people off the streets by sending an average $1,165 monthly check to about 9 million permanently unemployed who qualified through work history. More than 8 million others qualify because they are low-income and receive an average of $540 a month. Both groups require medical proof that they can't work.
A million hearings are pending, and it makes sense for applicants to keep pushing: Just under half of them eventually get the benefits, including millions who convince an administrative law judge on appeal that their disabilities make working impossible.
The Social Security Administration said two new judgeships are planned for Miami to lighten this load, but it's unclear if any candidates want to work there.
"The system doesn't work," said Bennett, 58, whose son quit college to help her pay rent after she was evicted. "No one should have to wait two years for a hearing. We have criminals that wait less time than that. These are people that are sick and have paid into the system."
Delays in other cities are nearly as bad: Brooklyn, N.Y.; Spokane, Wash.; Milwaukee; and Fort Myers, Fla., have 20-month waits. Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Baltimore; and Chattanooga, Tenn., are close behind at 19 months. The shortest wait time is eight months in Fort Smith. The national average is about one year and four months, according to the Social Security Administration, and petitioners typically wait another four to five months for a decision after the hearing.
Three years ago, the agency tried to resolve appeals more quickly by limiting caseloads, but then judges felt pressured to approve more cases. Since approvals take far less time and paperwork than denials, the program's overall cost soared. In a review last year, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee alleged that hundreds of judges were rubber-stamping approvals and costing taxpayers unnecessary billions. Four judges alone cost taxpayers $11 billion since 2005, the committee reported.
Fort Myers Judge Larry Butler said judges who took the time to comb through voluminous medical files to reach a decision were targeted for discipline for not approving cases fast enough.
"The people who are not generating a high volume of cases were the judges who were doing their jobs ... and those judges tend to have a lower payment rate," Butler said.
Seattle-based attorney John Chihak, whose firm handles 600 cases a year, said these judges "are in fact every bit subject to the capricious whims of the process as the subjects who have to wait two years to get a hearing."
President Barack Obama's administration said there's no indication judges are rubber-stamping cases. Overall approval rates have decreased from 56 percent in 2011 to 44 percent this year, according to the agency, but some of the raw data were not made public and could not be verified.
The agency's current goal is to reduce the wait to 270 days or less by 2020. A prehearing triage program has begun, and there are plans to hire 400 more judges by 2018. Video hearings also can reduce backlogs; judges with lighter caseloads in other states share the burden.
JoNel Newman, who directs the University of Miami's Health Rights Clinic, is suing in federal court on behalf of Bennett, Ruiz and 10 other applicants, alleging unreasonably long waits.
"It's just insurmountable -- the bureaucracy, the wait and the paperwork," she said.
In Buffalo, paralegal JoAnn Lewandowski said that for most of her clients, a disability check would be a lifeline.
"You've got people who are terminally ill, and those benefits could mean so much more to them," she said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people like Ruiz are desperate. The Miami woman's disability applications for her bipolar disorder have been rejected at least three times, and she can't afford her medicine.
"I'm struggling more than ever now," Ruiz said.
A Section on 11/29/2015