It can take a year or more to get through the federal government’s longest line — now more 1 million people long.
Desiree Hensley of Fairfield is one of the 40,000 Ohioans waiting.
Hensley, 58, said she can no longer work due to degenerative arthritis that grips her back and hips.
Experts tell us part of the backlog is due to population growth, aging Baby Boomers, the increase of women in the workforce and a lifting of the age for full Social Security retirement from 65 to 66.
But a bigger problem is a lack of staffing and shortage of judges overwhelmed by large and complicated medical cases, said Judge Linda Stagno, the acting president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges.
“We don’t have the experts — the medical experts that we need. We don’t have lawyers working for us to assist us. We’re kind of in a do-it-yourself operation,” Stagno said. “We’ve given the agency many, many suggestions on how to tighten up the process.”
We’re working an in-depth examination about the backlog and its impact on people like Hensley. We’ll bring you her story and others over the next several days.
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