If you get a paycheck, you're already paying for disability insurance, whether you want to or not. You don’t have a choice. It’s all part of Social Security. But if you ever get sick or injured on the job and try to collect on that insurance - good luck.

It’s a story of delay and denial.

In the Carolinas so-called “disability determination agents” deny seven out of 10 disability claims. In most cases the claims agents rule based on federal guidelines that applicants can work in some other job, outside their original workplace.

Of course claimants can hire lawyers and appeal their denial, but the whole process takes three years on average. If you were to think for a moment how you would pay your bills while you waited for years, you'll get some sense of what hundreds of thousands of Carolinians are going through.

Carolinians like Doug Broome of Iron Station, NC.

Broome loves his two boys. He’d like to take them hunting and fishing. He’d like to wrestle and roughhouse with them. But he mostly he just hangs around his trailer with them. "If I pick them up and play with them during the day, at the end of day I'm taking a Vicadin and a Flexoril just so I can go to sleep cause I'm hurting so bad,” Broome said.

Once Broome made good money repairing heavy equipment. He says it was his dream job and that companies competed over his salary. But a back injury put an end to that job.

So Broome tried a series of others. He reels them off:” Insurance sales, door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales, bartending, security….It was either standing for eight hours and sitting for eight hours and I can't do either one.”

So Broome applied for Social Security disability. He expected some delay. “I figured within a year I would have it. That's been three years ago.”

The wait has forced Broome to turn to his wife, his parents and her parents for basics like rent and groceries.

“This has almost ruined my marriage, it’s ruined my credit,” he said. “The department of disability, they don't see this. They don't have to see how people live.”

Broome's application like all others in North Carolina went first to an old warehouse on the eastern outskirts of Raleigh. Inside, hundreds of case workers review medical records from 128,000 claims a year. And in seven out of 10 of those cases, disability determination agents deny the claim.

“The denial rate at 70 percent is not out of line with what is going on in the Southeast,” said Disability Determination Service Chief Rhonda Currie. Currie says she agency is under tight federal rules. “The criteria for Social Security Disability is very strict,” she said.

But Broome is frustrated with repeated denials. “If they had to live like us for one month it would be the end for them,” he said. “They'd blow their brains out. They'd kill themselves. That's just how depressing it is.”

Charles T. Hall, a Raleigh lawyer who specializes in appealing disability claims and blogs on the subjec says he’s had two clients who committed suicide. “At our firm having a client die is not even unusual,” he said. “It's something we have to deal with routinely.”

Broome has hired a Charlotte attorney. He's appealing his denial. And he's waiting. He knows he's lucky to have a wife and family who support him. “If i didn't have those people to count on I'd be out on the street living out of my truck.”