When Veronica Sanchez called on a social security hotline on Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected.
Friday, she was pending for six hours and has still not succeeded in anyone.
“I will have to withdraw the time of my work to queue and, hope, solve this problem,” the 52-year-old medical training director at Canoga Park said on Monday.
For Sanchez, the challenges are high: if it does not obtain a medical letter from the agency before April 15, its parents, who are at a fixed income, risk losing about $ 2,500 per month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin drugs for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit to a nurse.
But even if Sanchez presents herself in person, she will probably not speak to an agent. The offices on the ground no longer accept an appointment without an appointment.
“The system is broken down,” said Sanchez.
The elderly and disabled – and those who care about them – meet a node of bureaucratic obstacles and service disturbances after the Trump administration has imposed a radical overhaul of the social security administration system.
No desk in the field in California has closed its doors. But there is growing frustration in southern California and the nation, because many elderly people live crushed web pages, endure the blocked telephone lines and are repressed in the offices. Social security officials have minimized problems and said that some of the problems prior to the Trump administration and the effectiveness of the government pushed by Elon Musk.
In February, the agency which sends monthly checks to nearly 73 million Americans announced its intention to reduce 7,000 jobs And consolidate its regional offices from 10 to four as part of an effort to “reduce the size of its swollen labor and its organizational structure”. The cuts, applied by the Musk advisory team, known as the Government Ministry of Efficiency, represent a 12% reduction in the agency’s workforce.
Sanchez does not think that it collects the advantages of the effectiveness of the government.
“It’s frustrating,” she said, noting that a call that would once take 15 minutes now involves much more work.
If Sanchez did not reach someone from social security this week, she feared that her parents – especially her mother, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, that she has trouble taking a cup of coffee – could find herself in the hospital.
“If they do not have the caregiver who comes to monitor their sugar in the morning, do the readings of the blood pressure …”, she said, “I don’t even want to think of the worst case. They will certainly be in a very, very, very bad situation.”
Last week, a coalition of advocacy groups, including the American Assn. People with disabilities have filed a federal complaint against the Social Security Administration, the acting commissioner Leland Dudek and Musk. He allegedly alleged that the revision of the agency revised “seriously undermined” and had caused “significant and irreparable damage”.
“In just nine weeks, the new administration has upset the agency with radical and destabilizing policy changes – the movement of the critical agency’s functions to overloaded local offices, the reduction of telephone services and debilitating the agency’s ability to meet the needs of beneficiaries”, the trial filed before the American district court for the Columbia district precedes.
“The result is a systematic dismantling of the basic functions of the SSA, leaving millions of beneficiaries without the essential advantages to which they are legally entitled,” added the trial. “The accused abandoned their duty, placing the ideology on the obligation and governance on the governed.”
Maria Town, president and chief executive officer of the American Assn. People with disabilities told Times that system changes not only harm people’s ability to register and register for benefits. People already connected to the system who needed support also had trouble allocating decisions on advantages or accessing medical services.
“You can’t put anyone on the phone,” she said.
Even before Trump took up his duties, said Town, the system had challenges: around 30,000 disabled people died in 2023 while waiting for their SSDI request to be approved.
“It will just make life more difficult for millions of Americans,” she said. “Americans disabled want the government to be effective and responsible for the needs of people. These cuts, despite their claims, are in fact unlike this objective. ”
The Social Security Administration did not respond to the requests for comments from the Times on the problems which declared that the elderly and disabled declared access to the services. The agency’s press office recognized in a series of messages on X that telephone waiting times were too long and that its website had faced challenges, but said that problems “prior to current administration”.
“Zero representatives intended for customers have been released,” said the agency, noting that it continued to “move the employees of critical posts not put to strengthen the ranks of our existing and dedicated front line employees to serve the public”.
Restructuring was “focused on critical services without compromising the quality of the services,” said the agency, and “aligns for the call of the American people for the effectiveness of government operations”.
But in Los Angeles, the people who presented themselves in the social security offices without an appointment were refused.
Andrew Taylor, 55, launched his hands in the air on Monday morning when he left the Social Security office on Wilshire Boulevard.
“Everything is by appointment now,” a federal employee told a small group of people aligned on the sidewalk.
Taylor, who is homeless and lives on Skid Row, had aligned himself just before the doors opened at 9 a.m., he wanted to receive a discount letter that would allow him to ask for food coupons and other advantages, but he had been told that he should wait three hours to enter. Even if he did it, there was no guarantee that he would receive the letter in the office.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Taylor. “They said they should post it to me and there is nothing that they could not do for me today.”
About five months ago, he said Taylor, he asked for the same letter from the same office and encountered no problem. He did not know what to make the difference and had not followed the changes in the White House.
“If that’s what they do in Washington, it’s not just for everyone,” he said. “The poor always seem to have the worst.”
Several other people were laid out, including Camilla Sosa, 68, who said she waited for the phone for about two hours on Friday. She had not received a social security letter she needs to allow her to open a new bank account, and she could not obtain a direct response on why.
An agency employee told her that without appointment, she should wait three hours.
“Oh no, it’s so long,” she said in Spanish. She decided to leave and try another day again.
Social security employees have distributed a leaflet with a phone number and a QR code that people could scan with their phones to make an appointment. But the website continued to return an error message.
Defenders of the elderly say that the challenges of access to social security aid were aggravated in March when the Trump administration announced new online verification procedures that led to many old and disabled Americans unable to use their “my social security” personal account.
“The system is a mess,” said Gevorg Adjian, founder of All Seniors Foundation, a non -profit organization in Los Angeles who offers free medical care, supplies and health services for the elderly.
After sending a letter last month, urging people with problems with the upcoming online system, said Adjian, the administration then eliminated any type of appointment without an appointment.
Adjian said he had suspended calls from the elderly who had lost or had not received checks.
“They have no one to contact to discover the status, and the meetings are three, four or five months later,” said Adjian. “On a social security income, you cannot really wait three, four months and have no payments.”
Adjian said his foundation helps the elderly get the online connections they need. But downloading their identifier could be a challenge, he said, because most of them do not use smart devices or do not have emails.
“He made the elderly heard to communicate with the Social Security Office,” he said about the system overhaul.
Adding to the complication, the agency deleted paper checks, on which many elderly people who do not trust online transactions count.
Dr. Stephen Carney, 74, an emergency care doctor in Los Angeles who receives social security, said that he expected the changes to injure many elderly people who are not a computer.
“Everyone should be excessive and waste in government in any nation,” he said. “But you don’t take meat apest and do not surgery.”
In a social security office in Los Angeles on Crenshaw Boulevard, the security guards did not allow anyone inside the building on Monday without an appointment.
A woman relying on a walker approached the doors after leaving her uber. She said she had an appointment.
The security guard looked at his documents and said that his appointment was for a telephone call and that someone from the agency was to call him.
She laughs and said, “Let me get.”
The goalkeeper directed her to a phone number on a leaflet displayed at the door and said she could try to get more information from the number.
“We have nothing for you here right now,” said the goalkeeper.
His goalkeeper ordered him back in the parking lot to call another carpooling driver.
California Daily Newspapers
