Mar 7, 2017

Online SSI Claims Coming On March 25 -- For Some People

     From Emergency Message EM-17008:
This Emergency Message explains the policy and procedures associated with enhancements to the online benefit application (iClaim) scheduled for release on March 25, 2017.  ...
For this first release, applicants applying online for Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) who answer “Yes” to the question, “Do you intend to file for SSI [Supplemental Security Income]?” are able to submit an iSSI application if they meet all of the following criteria:
    · Age 18 through 64;· Resides in 1 of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands;
    · Alleges disability, but not blindness;
    · Never married; and
    · Claimant’s Social Security Number (SSN) does not exists in any SSI system such as the Modernized SSI Claims System (MSSICS) and Supplemental Security Record (SSR).
     The "never married" provision rules out most adults. Why is that necessary? I assume the last provision would rule out anyone who has filed a prior SSI claim. Why is that necessary? Are these two provisions just intended to keep the roll-out slow to allow kinks to be worked out?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This will be great if it works smoothly. It creates extra work for everybody not being able to complete the SSI app online.

Anonymous said...

The MSSICs system is still quite antiquated in many areas. If someone is receiving SSI and their spouse files for SSI it requires "T33/Start Date" action for the field office. This could not work in an iclaim scenario. It often requires manual computations and peer reviews to complete the process. Clearly this is a soft rollout designed to avoid any kinks and I agree doing it this way to prevent a total mess if it was opened up completely. The iclaim for SSI will never be robust until MSSICs is further updated to automate certain changes that require significant manual inputs to correct the record (couple cases, citizenship changes, deemor changes, etc)

Anonymous said...

Having worked SSA disability cases filed online, I can only imagine how horrible those SSI claims will be. Claimants often cite onset dates that may be 20 years before they stop working at their $100K/yr job. Now it may have bothered them 20 years ago, but clearly they were able to keep working above SGA. It just makes for lots of work in the office (work activity report, etc) that could have been avoided had the claim not been filed online. The 3368s aren't too bad but the claims are frequently almost as much work to fix as they would be to take. Ditto retirement claims with MOEs that make no sense being chosen. 90% of the time when contacted, those folks want to change to a more favorable MOE. Many online DIB claims are a total waste--uninsured folks, folks who want short term state disability, etc. Filing those claims is the claimant's right and they will be processed but if they talked to someone for 5 minutes first, they may opt to not file much of the time. Those claims have to be processed just like the terminally ill guy who has a few months to live but the extra time to fix them all eats into field office time quite a bit.

Anonymous said...

This still has not been implemented.. thoughts?