WASHINGTON – The government says Vernon Lamirand, even with one eye, can find a job and doesn’t need to be on disability.

Lamirand disagrees. The pain where his left eye was surgically removed is so intense, he says, that he can do little else sometimes than lay down for a couple of hours with his good eye closed.

On the worst days, said Lamirand, of Norman, Oklahoma, “my life is sort of lived in two-hour increments.”

But in what a Social Security Administration official acknowledged this week as a “crisis,” the number of people who were denied disability benefits and are waiting for the agency to hear their appeals has grown to 1.1 million.

The process makes a difference. Administrative judges last year ruled in about half the cases that applicants were indeed too disabled to work.

But those seeking benefits must wait an average of 525 days – about a year and a half – for that decision.

That’s more than five months longer than the 360-day wait in 2012, and almost twice as long as the agency’s 270-day goal.

Lamirand’s wait for a monthly check of about $540, starting in March 2015, has pushed him to the edge of bankruptcy.

For others, waiting means not qualifying for health insurance. Unable to get care, they “experience significant worsening in their conditions,” Theresa Gruber, the Social Security Administration’s deputy commissioner for disability and adjudication review, told a Senate subcommittee this week.

Some have died while they waited, she said.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, the chairman of the Senate Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management subcommittee who called this week’s hearing, said more than 13,000 people in his state are waiting for their cases to be heard.

Lankford and the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, are also questioning the agency’s strategy to deal with the backlog. It plans to have agency attorneys take some cases off the hands of the administrative judges.

Lankford and Heitkamp are concerned about hearings by attorneys beholden to the agency. They could lead to lawsuits, costing taxpayers, and the agency may have to rehear cases heard by its lawyers, making the backlog worse.

Gruber said the backlog has grown because more people are applying for disability benefits at a time when the agency hasn’t had enough money to hire more judges. It is short about 400 judges, she said.

Congress gave the agency about $1 billion a year less than what the Obama administration requested from 2011 to 2013.

“The American public is getting older, so that’s a factor. The recession is a factor,” Marilyn Zahm, a judge from Buffalo and president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, said at the hearing.

According to the agency, the number of people receiving disability payments grew from 62 million two years ago to 65 million this March.

Last year, the agency’s judges heard 663,000 cases, but had 746,000 requests for hearings.

For those seeking disability benefits, the hearings are the first chance to make their case in person, said Barbara Silverstone, executive director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives.

They are able to present more detailed medical information and explain how they’re affected, she said in an interview.

Lamirand, 63, has been waiting for 14 months to explain how he is debilitated by the pain from what began as a detached retina.

He worked as a videographer for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol for more than 20 years before retiring from the state, he said. He’d planned to find work in the private sector before he lost his eye.

“Nobody wants a one-eyed videographer,” he said.

Ralph Rafiner, of Durant, Oklahoma, was also denied disability because Social Security said he could work despite spinal stenosis, a condition puts pressure on the nerves.

He waited 13 months before a judge agreed that the former asbestos removal worker could not hold down a job because his arm often goes numb, Rafiner said in an interview.

Wait times are long across the country. The agency’s office in downtown Atlanta office had the largest backlog. There, 14,702 people wait an average of 637 days for a hearing. Another 6,231 people registered with the Covington, Georgia, office face 624-day waits.

Other Social Security offices with longer-than-average waits include Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 588 days; Morgantown, West Virginia, 586 days; Pittsburgh, 585 days; Valparaiso, Indiana, 581 days; Huntington, West Virginia, 575 days; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 553 days; and Lawrence, Massachusetts, 540 days.

Gruber said the agency plans to hire more judges over the next three years but isn’t getting enough qualified applicants. So, it plans to have department attorneys field appeals not involving disability, such as those related to an applicants’ age, citizenship or income.

Gruber said the attorneys are qualified and are required to be neutral.

Silverstone is still concerned. Independent judges, unlike agency attorneys, cannot be disciplined by the administration for overturning too many denials.

Zahm said the requirement for independent judges to hear appeals “is what gives the American public confidence that they’ll get a fair hearing.”

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com