ORLANDO, Fla. — A widow said that not getting benefits slowly broke her husband until he took his own life.
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The Social Security Administration says about 30,000 people died last year waiting for their benefits to be approved.
The agency said they are working on technology to reduce those wait times.
9 Investigates, along with our CMG stations across the country, have been investigating the SSA and its failures. From overpayment demands to wait times to denials, millions of Americans are affected by those decisions the agency is or isn’t making.
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Sarah Grimes and her husband had been married for 20 years, but a slip and fall in the back of a work truck in 2019 changed their life forever.
He fell and had to have back surgery and his neck fused together. After those surgeries, Ray Grimes was in a wheelchair and constant pain.
“To slowly watch the person that you love go from doing everything by themselves to, I need you to help me wash my feet because I can’t bend over to wash anything from the chest down kind of thing.’ That’s rough,” Sarah Grimes said.
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It was clear he would not be able to work, so they had to apply for social security disability.
“So we fill out all the paperwork, we get it sent in,” Sarah Grimes said. “They come back with, well, we need more filled out. There was never a definitive answer of what more meant? We went through all these hoops and the more hoops we jumped through, the more hoops they gave us.”
They appealed to the federal court and still nothing.
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Grimes said, “The judge denied the appeal and basically said start over with no real explanation as to why they had denied it for him, with no real explanation as to why they felt he wasn’t entitled to something he should have been entitled to, and then I just watched that break him.”
And earlier this year, Ray Grimes took his own life.
“Do you blame the government?” Channel 9 asked. “I do,” she said.
And sadly, he is not the only one. On average, it takes about 7 months for new disability applicants to receive a decision.
The Social Security commissioner said about 30,000 people died in 2023 waiting for social security.
The commissioner said the agency is working on updating technology to get the claims processed earlier.
That doesn’t help Sarah Grimes, but she is speaking out to try to get the SSA to move quicker.
“I think it’s important that no other family suffers,” Sarah Grimes said. “And if I can, you know, I’ve lost everything, I’ve lost the ultimate thing, you know, I lost my spouse, and I know there’s several other people that probably feel the same way that he does whether they focalize it and i think that if sharing my story can help one family to not live the hell that I have to live now then I think it’s worth it to help his change doesn’t need to happen and the system does need to be fixed and whoever’s looking at these cases needs to really look at these cases.”
If a Social Security disability applicant dies before being approved for benefits, a family member may be able to collect. A hearing on her case is next month.
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