The Social Security Administration has released updated data on payments of fees to attorneys and others for representing Social Security claimants. Payments were way down in December 2007.
As I mention each time I post this data, it should be of interest not merely to those who represent Social Security claimants. Attorneys and other who represent Social Security claimants are paid at about the same time as the Social Security claimants themselves. When we see a slowdown in payments to those who represent Social Security claimants, we are seeing strong evidence of a slowdown in payments to the claimants themselves. No only do claimants have to wait and wait for adjudication of their claims, they often have to wait for payment after a favorable decision.
As I mention each time I post this data, it should be of interest not merely to those who represent Social Security claimants. Attorneys and other who represent Social Security claimants are paid at about the same time as the Social Security claimants themselves. When we see a slowdown in payments to those who represent Social Security claimants, we are seeing strong evidence of a slowdown in payments to the claimants themselves. No only do claimants have to wait and wait for adjudication of their claims, they often have to wait for payment after a favorable decision.
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 |
May-07 | 24,429 | $86,625,391.60 |
June-07 | 27,716 | $99,357,038.71 |
July-07 | 21,807 | $78,273,082.88 |
Aug-07 | 28,607 | $101,523,346.40 |
Sept-07 | 21,409 | $75,663,579.78 |
Oct-07 | 21,903 | $79,209,567.01 |
Nov-07 | 27,096 | $97,365,979.66 |
Dec-07 | 17,991 | $63,943,231.30 |
5 comments:
What is the cause of the delay in receiving back pay? I have a friend who received their fully favorable decision in September 2007 and began receiving monthly benefit payments in November but still has not received their back pay. It's a standard Title II case, no unusual issues. Are the payment centers really that far behind?
Because paying attorney fees is an agency priority. Paying retro benefits to claimants is not.
There are two other possibilities - either there is SSI offset involved and they are waiting for the local office to do the offset comp -- or the underpayment is large and it has to be reviewed before it is released.
Yeah, but they drag their feet coming up with the comps. No telling how long the retro will be in S9 before the comps are done.
The one I like is if there is not enough retro money to do the SSI offset and the attorney's fee. Do they reduce the attorney's fee, NO the SSI offset is redone to come up with enough money to do both.
As a field office SSI claims rep who is responsible for SSI windfall offset, I will toss in my perspective.
1. Our office is inundated by heavy walk-in traffic, and management's number 1 priority is taking care of people who walk in the door. The rest of the work, including manual offset comps, is secondary. You can call it feet dragging or management priority.
2. The SDW debacle continues to create tremendously huge windfall offset computations. Also, it appears that the T2 protected filing policies have been expanded so much, that many non SDW DIB/RIB/WIB claims end up with long retroactive periods as well. The SSID is sometimes in pieces due to Start Date records. The existance of multiple records takes the offset out of the automated region and into the dreaded manual offset comp. There are more tools available than years ago, but manual offset comps still take a lot of time and expertise.
3. The T2 CR's are encouraged to take ABAP SSI claims in ALL DIB and many RIB claims, regardless of potential entitlement. Those ABAP claims are denied immediately, excess income or excess resources. However, the DIB claims are adjudicated with a windfall indicator which doesn't just go away because the SSI claim was denied. Three or six or 36 months later, the DIB claim is adjudicated favorably and the windfall indicator grabs the retroactive benefits due. By this time, the SSID is gone into a terminated status, and nothing can be done by the field office since no systems control or diary is established for the field office to work. The action needs to be taken by the PC who continues to wait for the field to act and no one, except the claimant, knows that something needs to be done.
4. The area goal is to not have any windfall offset diaries over 120 days. I always make that goal, but that can be 5 months of waiting, 1 month for the diary to mature from the date set and 4 months before it is 120 days old. If management wanted these done sooner, they would take me off walk-in interviews and calling numbers to do benefit verifications and address changes that the service reps should be doing. But people would then be sitting in the waiting room for hours and hours.
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