Apr 25, 2011

SDW Finished -- But Was All The SDW Done?

Social Security has announced an end to the Special Disability Workload (SDW) project. SDW has been a long ongoing effort to identify and correct past mistakes in the processing of Social Security disability claims. A simple example would be a widow who filed only a claim for widow's disability benefits when she could also have filed a claim for disability benefits on her own account and received more money. Most, if not all, of the SDW cases were identified by database searches and matches. (There is a fascinating back story on the "unknown hero and pariah" who brought about SDW.) Many of the SDW cases involved staggering amounts of money. Not rarely, people received over $100,000 in back benefits as a result of SDW reviews. Many of the SDW cases were enormously complicated affairs since they went back years, involved complicated interrelations between different types of Social Security benefits and Social Security's byzantine disability work incentives. To handle the SDW cases, Social Security formed an SDW "cadre" of its most able, experienced people. SDW was conducted well out of view of the public but it was an important effort to get it right, to pay the correct benefits to the right people.

I would be happy to see Social Security finished with the SDW since it ate up a lot of staff time but the announcement suggests that there may be some SDW that remains, work that may never get done. Has Social Security truly finished the SDW except for some minor loose ends or is SDW being abandoned because of budget pressures? The timing suggests the latter.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The idiots in charge of SSA spent so much time micromanaging and reworking the existing SDW cases that they never really bothered to address the base issues that caused SDW in the first place.

So, what it boils down to, is that in about 10 years or so we'll be right back where we started with SDW II (or whatever they choose to call it then).

I swear the people in charge of this agency need keepers.

Anonymous said...

It is not an unexpected budget thing. There really are only a handful left.

Anonymous said...

Not only have the SDW cases been substantially identified and corrected, policies and procedures have been put into place to prevent recurrence of the problem in the future.

Anonymous said...

It was a big waste of time and resources in the first place. This could have been handled by figuring out an average underpayment and making remuneration to the affected claimants. Might have required Congressional and WH approval, but it wouldn't have taken all these years to get it done.

Anonymous said...

They are not and never will be done. I just found one last week doing a redetermination, but the vast majority of CR's on the job these days do not have the training nor expertise to identify them. That does not even address the egregious shortcuts that most take to work the redets, besides.
The agency has basically given up on them becasue there are no more resources.

Anonymous said...

And Maybe they should also take a look at all the people receiving SSI disability and/or a small DIB benefit on their own record who now, many years after initial entitlement may be due higher CDB benefits on the record of a now retired or deceased parent. But this would also involve an underpayment and SSA isn't going to actively look for underpayments.

Anonymous said...

Exactly so. The way redets are done now, no one is going out of their way to look for anything that will slow down processing and chance missing the clearance goals. Lots of money going unclaimed.

harry said...

You are interesting.

Anonymous said...

Previous comment links to a sex site and should be deleted.

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't there be some statute of limitation. If someone filed the wrong application 20 years ago, you give them the normal 6 months of retro benefit and that should be it.

Anonymous said...

SSa attorneys are idiots.