Delays in Disability Pay Assailed : Health care: Advocacy group says state’s backlog is among nation’s worst. Bush Administration failed to staff programs, report charges.

Californians who are too ill to work are still waiting longer than almost anyone in the nation for disability benefits, even though federal officials warned the state last year to shorten delays, a new national study reported Wednesday.

The report, released Wednesday by the Washington-based Families USA Foundation, a liberal advocacy group calling for national health care reform, added that staff cuts and the depressed job market have contributed to record backlogs nationwide.

Delays, the foundation said, are particularly critical in Hawaii, New Jersey and California, where caseloads are so backed up that by 1993 new applicants will face an average wait of nine months or more--just to find out if they qualify for benefits.

“For too many people, the inordinate delays have resulted in deterioration of health and irreparable financial ruin,” the foundation charged.

The politically charged study, released in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, criticizes the Bush Administration for failing to adequately staff disability programs nationwide and failing to dip deeply enough into Social Security contingency funds.

Bush aides acknowledged that they are aware of the problem. The statistics, compiled by the Social Security Administration, have been a matter of public record for some time and were cited as recently as August in congressional testimony.

“People are not happy about the problem and we’re not happy,” said Tom Scully, deputy assistant to the President. “We have been responding in every way we can find.”

Scully noted, for example, that Bush released $100 million in emergency funds this spring. Since then, he said--despite the long lines here--the average waiting period for the nation has been whittled down from 120 days to 104 days.

The delays are “clearly unfortunate, and we need to speed things up, but we have been spending a hell of a lot of money on it,” Scully said. “We are hiring people to process claims as fast as we can.”

The Social Security Administration threatened last year to take direct federal control of the disability programs in California and New Jersey because the states were so slow in handling claims. Although Social Security programs are paid for with federal funds, each state runs its own disability program and hires its own workers to determine if residents are entitled to benefits.

But after giving the two states six months to improve their backlogs and error rates, the Administration eventually dropped the ultimatum, saying they were satisfied that California and New Jersey had been addressing the problem.

In April, 4.7 million people were receiving disability insurance benefits, 15% more than in 1988. By December, the report projected, the number of blind or disabled beneficiaries on Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, will have reached 4 million, up 33% from 1988. SSI and disability insurance are the two main sources of federal aid for people who are unable to work because of physical or mental problems.

Further adding to the demand has been a 1990 Supreme Court decision easing the eligibility requirements for disabled children in poor families to collect payments.

The foundation also blames the government for the backlog, charging that staff cuts over the last decade have eroded efficiency.

By the end of 1993, the wait for a decision on a disability claim will have reached a national average of six months and the backlog will stand at 1.2 million claims, the foundation predicted. The report added that Californians will face the third-longest delay in the nation, with a projected wait of 270 days.

Meanwhile, California’s massive backlog will continue to be the nation’s worst, with 182,016 unanswered claims for 1993.

Eva Nesterovsky, a 56-year-old Russian immigrant, knows what it’s like to be part of that statistic.

As a 5-year-old, Nesterovsky was injured as her family ran for their lives during a Nazi bombing. Her father was killed, she said, and as she fled along a road with her mother and brother, she was thrown by a blast that left her crippled for life.

Nesterovsky and her husband, Boris, emigrated to the United States in 1990. He had worked in a seaport since he was 18 years old and was a year from retirement age; she had never held a paying job.

Unable to stand, sit or walk for long periods without excruciating pain, and suffering from chronic hypertension, headaches and dizziness, Nesterovsky had been supported throughout her adult life by a disability pension in the Soviet Union.

In the United States, a neighbor told her she could qualify for disability too. She applied, she said, but six months passed without a penny or a word.

The couple signed up for General Relief. The benefits, funded by the county as a safety net for the poorest of the poor, amounted to $506 a month for the two of them. All but $56 of it went for rent.

Finally, they heard from the Social Security Administration: Her benefits had been denied. On the advice of their neighbor, they ended up at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a Fairfax district social service agency, and began an appeal that dragged on for a year.

Eventually, after a second application and a hearing before an administrative law judge, their benefits were approved. Even so, they said, more than five months have passed and they still have not received their first check.

Social Security caseworkers could not comment on the case, but Pamela Reim, a spokeswoman for the regional office in San Francisco, said that even a person who is legally considered to be disabled cannot automatically qualify for Supplemental Security Income.

“Their income and resources must also be reviewed,” she said.

“How do we live?” sighed Boris Nesterovsky, who checks his mailbox each day in vain for an SSI check. “This is a question.”