From The NOSSCR Conference -- Nancy Shor

Nancy Shor, the Executive Director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR), spoke at the NOSSCR Conference (of course). Here are some points I picked up from her speech:

• She is concerned about the concept of a revolving fund in the budget for efforts to reduce "fraud" at Social Security. She thinks this could create incentives for Social Security to go overboard with Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs).
• Bills are pending in Congress to eliminate the five month waiting period for Title II Social Security disability benefits and the twenty-four month waiting period for Medicare for the disabled.
• She hopes to have a Senate sponsor within ten to fourteen days for legislation that would raise the cap on attorney fees under the fee agreement process to the full extent of inflation, almost $6,300 and to include an automatic adjustment for inflation in the future. John Lewis is already sponsoring the legislation in the House.
  
• She predicts that Social Security will not be able to send out 1099s to attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants even in 2010. The holdup is new regulations on recognizing entities as representing claimants.
• Ms. Shor believes that Social Security may have to publish a new Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) on recognizing entities as representatives of claimants because things may change so much from the NPRM published last year.
• Claimants' attorneys may have to use a "fob" device to obtain an code to access their clients' records electronically. Apparently, the fobs are easy to come by and inexpensive. These are already used to access some bank records.