When Veronica Sanchez called a Social Security hotline Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected.
On Friday, she was on hold for six hours and still did not get through to anyone.
For Sanchez, the stakes are high: If she does not obtain a medical letter from the agency by April 15, her parents, who are on a fixed income, risk losing about $2,500 a month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin medication for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit from a nurse.
But even if Sanchez shows up in person, she is not likely to speak to an agent. Field offices are no longer accepting walk-in appointments.
Andrew Taylor, 55, threw his hands up in the air Monday morning as he walked out of the Social Security office on Wilshire Boulevard.
“Everything is by appointment now,” a federal employee told a small group of people lined up on the sidewalk.
Social Security employees handed out a flier with a phone number and a QR code that people could scan with their phones to make an appointment. But the website kept returning an error message.
At a Los Angeles Social Security office on Crenshaw Boulevard, security guards did not allow anyone inside the building Monday without an appointment. A woman leaning on a walker approached the doors after getting out of her Uber. “We don’t have anything for you here right now,” the guard said. Her caretaker directed her back into the parking lot to call for another rideshare driver.
Elderly and disabled people — and those who care for them — are encountering a knot of bureaucratic hurdles and service disruptions after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security Administration system.
Last week, a coalition of advocacy groups, including the American Assn. of People with Disabilities, filed a federal lawsuit against the Social Security Administration, Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, and Musk. It alleged that the agency overhaul “severely undermined” services and caused “significant and irreparable harm.”
[AAPD prez sez it's not just people trying to enroll...] People already connected to the system who needed support were also having trouble appealing benefits decisions or accessing medical services.
“You can’t get anyone on the phone,” she said.
The Social Security Administration did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment on the problems elderly and disabled people reported accessing services. The agency’s press office acknowledged in a string of posts on X that
telephone wait times were too long and its
website had faced challenges, but said the issues “predate the current Administration.”
