Aug 15, 2007

DSI Being "Suspended"

The Social Security Administration has published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that would suspend new cases going into the Federal Reviewing Officer (FedRO) program. Those 15,500 cases already in the FedRO system would stay in that system. The projected cost savings from this are $907 million over the next ten years.

This is not immediately effective. Comments may be filed on the NPRM for the next month. Probably, the proposed rules will be quickly adopted thereafter. Until then, apparently, new cases will continue to go into the FedRO program.

There is no word on what will happen to those unfortunates who took jobs as FedROs.

Comments are also requested on what to do with the Medical and Vocation Expert System that is a part of the Disability Service Improvement (DSI) plan.

Thus, about six months after taking office, Commissioner Michael Astrue is effectively labeling the greatly heralded DSI plan of his predecessor, Jo Anne Barnhart, a failure and is abandoning it. Is this a decent interval?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The projected cost savings from this are $907 million over the next ten years.

That before or after counting what is cost to set up and reverse the DSI plan?

Anonymous said...

The FedRO was much less efficient than the failed Adjudication Offer program of the 1990's. Anybody with sense and a knowledge of SSA history should have known that the implementation plan was doomed to spectacular failure.