Damien Paletta has an article in the Wall Street Journal on yesterday's Congressional hearing. Here are some excerpts:
Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue said judges in his agency who award disability benefits more than 85% of the time cost taxpayers roughly $1 billion a year. ...
"I find it interesting that there is so much wringing of the hands about a judge who pays almost 100% of his cases, as if the agency didn't know about it, as if the agency wasn't complicit in it, as if the agency didn't encourage it," said Marilyn Zahm, a Social Security judge in Buffalo who is an executive vice president of the judge's union, speaking in an interview after the hearing....
The hearing included several tense exchanges between Mr. Astrue and lawmakers, with Democrats frustrated the agency hasn't done more to reduce a backlog of applicants and Republicans questioning abuse in the system.
Mr. Astrue, at one point, lashed out at lawmakers for threatening to cut his agency's funding, which he said will make it harder for judges to move more cases and erase a large backlog of pending cases.
"We're on the verge of getting there. And if we miss it, it's not because I have failed," Mr. Astrue said. "It's because Congress chose to fail, and it's up to all of you."
In watching this over the internet none of the exchanges between Astrue and the Congressmen seemed tense. I do not remember Astrue saying anything about ALJs costing Social Security a billion dollars a year. Even if he did, Astrue's expressed attitude towards ALJs was nothing like what is implied in the first sentence of this article. We all tend to hear what we want to hear or expect to hear. There may be some element of that in Paletta's article.
I am glad that Paletta quoted Astrue on the possibility of failing to bring down the backlog. There is no distortion in that quote. There clearly was passion in Astrue's voice when he spoke. To me that was the only striking moment in a rather mundane Congressional hearing.
5 comments:
He did say that the cost could be up to a billion dollars per year. I don't think the Democrats were frustrated with the agency though. They were clearly using the questioning to vent about the poor funding to the agency and bemoaning a missed opportunity to clear the backlog. There was very little questioning on abuse of the system either. It was more about the quality of the judging.
I have a feeling a recent trend I am seeing with cases at the initial and re-consideration stages reflect on the pressure to reduce backlogs. I have had several clients file for benefits and receive denials with in a 2 month period. Does not seem like the examiners have time to receive or review medical records in that time frame.
@ anon 12:01...you don't think that 2 months is enough time to review a file of medical records?
I would imagine that review of the medical records probably takes 1-4 hours.
Anon 12:01, denials, fast or slow, don't reduce backlogs. They contribute to them. Think about it - only denials result in request for hearing. A fast denial by DDS just means the case gets to ODAR faster
dds is primarily concerned with getting the favorables out as quickly as possible. makes sense, really, to get those out without delay. unfortunately that means they dont have time to wait around, follow up, request evidence, etc., on the denials.
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