Social Security has posted updated data on payments of fees to attorneys and others eligible for direct payment of fees for representing Social Security claimants. After being at very low levels in January and February of this year, fee payments went up dramatically in March and April, probably due to the authorization of overtime for payment center employees. These fee payment figures track closely with payments of benefits to claimants who have been recently approved for benefits. Increased payments of these fees indicate reduction in backlogs of payments to claimants.
Fee Payments | ||
|---|---|---|
| Month/Year | Volume | Amount |
| Jan-07 | 15,331 | $55,149,991.81 |
| Feb-07 | 19,301 | $69,731,683.72 |
| Mar-07 | 26,505 | $94,396,916.02 |
Apr-07 | 26,889 | $96,650,134.82 |
Paying attorneys is an SSA priority, but claimants are made to wait months to get their retroactive benefits. SSA should never have got into the business of collecting and paying attorney fees.
ReplyDeleteWE would be very happy to not be in the fee-paying business. However, many attorneys would be very unhappy. All you have to do is look at the history. The last serious attempt to get us out of the fee paying business led to the "user fee" as a way of offsetting the costs. But then the EXTREMELY storng attorney lobby deci=ded 6.3% was too high so a cap of $75 (and now $77) was set. The cap costs more to administer than it pays us. You all out there have no concept of the amount of time we spend administering the attorney fee part of the program. Trust me - it would be in SSA's best interests to not have to deal with that!
ReplyDeleteWell that was somewhat rhetorical in that I know well that attorneys take care of themselves through the SSDI program.
ReplyDeleteI knew the fix was in when doing BA work that all computations are rounded down except when doing an attorney fee you round up.