We all know that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is hard to understand and that getting through it takes time and a lot of help, mostly from people who work there or have made it their job to help people who need to use the system. But hearing about it and going through it are two very different things. A lot of people find this out the hard way when they get hurt or need to start getting benefits.
We can all learn about the system and figure out what changes we need to push for by hearing other people’s stories and understanding what they went through to get what they got. Earl Barry, a former employee of Office Depot, has been fighting with the Social Security Administration (SSA) over his disability payments for a long time. He told CBS 6 News that this battle had taken a toll on his emotions, saying, “It’s been very difficult…” Due to suicidal thoughts, I had to go to therapy.
Barry’s health problems started with a bad case of asthma. This was followed by a heart condition that made Barry’s heart beat irregularly. He said this about his condition: “It’s crippling.” You are very tired, have serious shortness of breath, and are dizzy. Even though Barry had serious health problems, his retirement claims in October 2022 and December 2023 were both turned down for a “medical reason.”
Barry asked the SSA, “What medical forms are you missing?” because he was frustrated and confused by their answers. His doctors had filled out all the appropriate paperwork, but his application form was the problem. He was shocked by how the SSA handled his case and asked, “How do they not have that on their system?” I don’t know how they work.
Premiere Disability asked for a second look at Barry’s case in March 2024. Usually, it takes the SSA seven months to react to these kinds of requests, but because of how the appeal was handled, it took even longer. This has made Barry’s financial position very bad. His savings are gone, and the bank took back his house. “My car will be my home.” I have no place to go and no money. I don’t have any money.
Even though Barry’s story is scary, his problems with the SSA are not unusual. In an even stranger case, the SSA mistakenly marked a woman from Memphis as dead in January, which meant she didn’t get any services for months. Because of this mistake, she couldn’t work, get her tax return, or get health insurance because records said she didn’t exist anymore. This isn’t an individual case; Fox 13 said that about 10,000 people deal with this problem every year, which is a scary number.
There are changes in the Social Security Administration
Martin O’Malley, who used to be governor of Maryland and is now the commissioner of the SSA, has admitted that the office has serious problems with customer service. Speaking on the SSA podcast, O’Malley said, “That’s not normal.” This is not okay. And it’s not fair that people who have worked their whole lives to get benefits should have to wait 44 minutes, an hour, or more, to get our answer.
O’Malley, who took office in December 2023, stressed the need for change after an incident in which the agency asked recipients of overpayments to return billions of dollars. He understood that the complicated and lengthy processes make things very hard for beneficiaries. “It’s not fair that 10,000 people die every year while they wait for their disability decisions to be made. It’s also not fair that we sometimes have to recover overpayments that forced people out of their homes, even though the recipient did nothing wrong.” Half of our seniors indeed live off of Social Security alone.
He has already begun to make changes that will make the system better. The SSA wants to cut down on call times, speed up disability decisions, and deal with issues of overpayments and underpayments. At the time, specific plans for how to reach these goals weren’t given, and they have been slowly put into place to allow for time for implementation.