Here's another of the many ways that Social Security has trouble fulfilling its mission because of lack of staff. An Inspector General report shows that Social Security is having a hard time dealing with situations in which a claimant fails to cash his or her Social Security check. The failure could indicate many things that Social Security should address, such as the claimant being dead, the claimant being mentally incompetent or a representative payee being irresponsible but the agency doesn't know unless it does an adequate follow up and that takes staff time but staff time is in short supply at Social Security. Social Security tries to follow up on these cases but isn't doing all that it should.
I suppose that switching to electronic payment might seem to be the solution for the problem but, if anything, electronic payment merely hides problems that need resolution.
Congress may not like it, Social Security management may not like it, but the Social Security Administration cannot avoid social work duties. People's lives tend to get a bit messy when they get older or become disabled. Dealing with that messiness is an inherent part of the agency's mission. It's social work and it takes staff. Staff costs money. If you don't spend the money to allow an adequate staff, vulnerable people suffer and taxpayper money is wasted.
Congress may not like it, Social Security management may not like it, but the Social Security Administration cannot avoid social work duties. People's lives tend to get a bit messy when they get older or become disabled. Dealing with that messiness is an inherent part of the agency's mission. It's social work and it takes staff. Staff costs money. If you don't spend the money to allow an adequate staff, vulnerable people suffer and taxpayper money is wasted.
5 comments:
Lack of staff? ODAR's Appeals Council has hundreds of lawyers. It assigns from 2 to 5 government lawyers to work on a single request for review. In most cases, at least 2 lawyers work on a case before denying a request for review. Up to 5 lawyers can work on a single case before granting review. That is in addition to the 2 government lawyers at ODAR's hearing level (ALJ and decision writer) who have already worked on the same case. Does the public really need and can it afford to have 2 to 7 lawyers reviewing every single non-adversarial administrative disability action in ODAR? Would limited SSA resources be better spent in other areas?
Tracking down uncashed checks has never been an SSA FO workload, at least in any of the six offices I worked in. Nor should it be.
The vast majority of beneficiaries are going to let SSA know if they miss a check (and quite quickly), so the most likely cause of an uncashed check would likely be a deceased beneficiary. The Treasury Department should eventually realize that checks to a particular individual are going uncashed and could either follow-up on the matter itself or let SSA know that beneficiary A has not cashed a check in six months and let SSA figure out why.
determining the status of uncashed checks has always been a routine fo workload. where the heck did you work. who did them for you.
The administrative costs of SSA are far less than comparable costs in private insurance companies. SSA's admin costs should be paid from the trust funds without being considered part of the general budget. (Mr. Levine, please don't start about the trust funds).
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