Disability Benefit Process Defended

* Social Security Commissioner Shirley Chater wants changes in the disability program, supposedly for efficiency and economy. The net result will be emasculation of the benefit process for thousands of disabled Americans, the very people the program was established to help. She wants to reduce the amounts payable to attorneys for the disabled. She also wants to dismantle direct payments of attorney fees from the back pay of claimants.

The results will be that many law offices that process disability claims will be unable to do so if the stipend is reduced. Without effective aid in disability’s complex process, many disabled will be denied benefits.

The result of these changes will be large numbers of truly disabled persons living in substandard conditions, unable to combat their disabilities and--in some instances--reduced to living in the streets and making new demands of Medi-Cal programs and for services at county facilities and from public assistance.

In Orange County, we have a real bankruptcy that has resulted in slashing medical services left and right. If the purpose of the Chater proposal is to render all public and private health services incapable of meeting the needs of the disabled, it will surely do that.

I can’t believe that anyone advocating the massive changes envisioned in this plan could have done so without consulting either the disabled or those whom they select to represent them. While lawyers have options, the disabled do not. Is this government so dedicated to cutting taxes and balancing budgets that it is willing to do so at the expense of the truly disabled, the element of our society least able to protect itself?

TINA L. LAINE

Chairwoman

Social Security Disability Section

Orange County Bar Assn.