Representative Sam Johnson, the ranking Republican on the House Social Security Subcommittee, asked Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to do a report on Social Security's efforts to deal with the cases of disability recipients who return to work. OIG has reported back that Social Security is working hard on the issue but that Social Security has a backlog of these cases. The agency could do more if it had more resources. The report notes that:
The report also notes that the agency is working on a proposal to simplify its work policies to "reduce administrative complexity and workloads through program simplification" and to "encourage more DI [Disability Insurance] beneficiaries to return to work." I hope this is true and that the proposal is being developed on a different time frame than the nine year Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND).SSA convened a “Work CDR [Continuing Disability Review] Workgroup” in January 2010 to identify and implement improvements and adopted the following recommendations:
• Dedicated staff to target the oldest cases—initially, cases over 365 days old, then a gradual reduction of the age threshold;
• Prioritized earnings alerts by amount of earnings and worked cases with highest earnings to minimize overpayments;
• Improved communication between operational components; and
• Allocated additional staff resources to conduct work CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews].
2 comments:
It would seem as an idea that the government should have"government sponsored employers"similar to sheltered work which would allow a disabled person to work off the disability rolls but if such person lose that position they would be reinstated onto the disability rolls.
Social Security has too much management staff in offices, and not enough Claims Reps that can actually do the work. That should be a work incentive to get actual workers and not the supervisors and managers at 1-supervisor to 4 employees-such a waste of government money where I work! Oops, there goes another CR being promoted for kissing up to the right people, and no one hired to replace them that actually knows the job, go figure!
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