Agency: Rush checks to the dying

Currently, there is a
mandatory five-month
waiting period.

CLEVELAND (AP) — A state agency that handles Social Security disability claims has asked Ohio’s congressional delegation to back a proposal that would allow terminally ill patients to receive payments quickly.

The seven-member Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission, which handled 169,392 disability claims in Ohio last year, endorsed the bill proposed by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and called for his Ohio colleagues on Capitol Hill to support the measure, which would waive a five-month waiting period for such patients.

“Terminally ill beneficiaries deserve their money as soon as they are approved,” said John M. Connelly, executive director of the commission. “The long waiting period is an unnecessary hurdle to jump.”

The five-month wait reflects a standard back-to-work benchmark and is meant to avoid paying benefits to those who don’t have a long-term disability, U.S. Social Security Administration spokeswoman Carmen Moreno said Friday.

The agency administers disability programs established by law but doesn’t comment on pending legislation, she said.

Moreno had no immediate estimate on how many disabled Americans die while awaiting their first benefit payment. Social Security processed 2.5 million disability claims last year, approving 34 percent.

Brown named his proposal for Arthur Woolweaver Jr. of Cuyahoga Falls, who was terminally ill when his $1,800 monthly disability payments were approved but was told the first payment would begin after a mandatory five-month waiting period.

He died before the payments began.

Woolweaver, 58, who had cancer, died last June 12, six days after his wife called Brown’s office to ask about his disability claim.

With a family in that type situation, “This ought to be one place where we can lift the burden on them,” Brown said Friday by phone in between stops in western Ohio.

His bill, introduced Sept. 12, has been referred to committee and there have been no hearings so far. Brown said he was hoping to link his proposal to other legislation, a tactic often used in the Senate, where he said free-standing bills are less common.

Brown said fairness requires speeding up payments to those like Woolweaver who paid into Social Security for years and had little time to live after a disability finding.

“It’s something we ought to do. When somebody has worked like Mr. Woolweaver did all his life, he earned this and because of this pretty much automatic five-month wait, he died before he got it. That just shouldn’t happen,” Brown said.