Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times has written a column about the threat that Social Security faces from Covid-19 "long haulers." We could see a huge wave of disability claims from Covid-19 survivors coming in the aftermath of the pandemic. This is in addition to the routine claims that people have deferred filing because of the closure of Social Security's field offices, the large backlog of cases that have built up at the initial and reconsideration levels during the pandemic and the possibility of a huge surge of SSI claims from Puerto Rico and other territories depending upon what the Supreme Court does with U.S. v. Vaello-Madero. The Social Security Administration isn't ready for any of this.
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Of course, Social Security is not ready for the aftermath. Neither am I. Right now, SSA along with every other agency and business and pretty much every person is focused on one thing: surviving the pandemic well enough to get through it while providing as much service as possible safely. It would be great to have a plan in place and staff to go with it, but that is no one's reality yet.
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ReplyDeleteSSA employees may be "long haulers" too, the administration has done nothing that would help front line SSA workers get the vaccine
. When there is a furlough I'm told I'm essential and have to go to work at SSA without pay, until the spending issue is settled..
Yet I'm not essential when it comes to getting the vaccine. Shouldn't SSA workers be covered under "continuity of essential government services" provisions? A
Good article. Believe the long haulers with chronic fatigue will be a problem. Also there may be more breathing related problems.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest flood of claims I believe will be depression in 1-2 years. It happened in 2008. Many people lost their jobs, legitimately got depressed, and could not recover. Typically it was people over 50 who really could only do 1 job.
Sure, there will be people who file because they cannot get a job. And the conservatives will latch onto those as scamming the system to deny more benefits.
Oh and the SSA is not equipped to handle more claims? What a shocker.
The 30% reduction in SSI claims is accurate, but does not tell the true story. In many states, SSI claims are driven by the State welfare office requiring people to file for disability, even though they most likely don't meet the listings. At the beginning of the office closures, we saw very little requests for benefit verifications, replacement SSN cards for adults or SSI application referrals. Why? Because the State wasn't requiring them. Now that the State is reverting back to some of their pre-Covid requirements, we are seeing increased traffic for all of these workloads.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, some people have been disadvantaged by the office closures. However, the 30% figure is not accurate. If only SSA leadership would acknowledge this. Instead we will jump through more and more hoops trying to get our receipts higher.
SSI for Puerto Rico is the only real concern here. I know talk of/concern about long-term COVID symptoms is low in terms of popular awareness, but I just haven't seen any numbers suggesting there are that many people (relative to our population/SSA's normal disability claims, etc.--not in raw terms, I'm sure it's tens if not hundreds of thousands) with them or who will get them.
ReplyDeleteYou have to remember, just a few short years ago OHO (and the rest of SSA and of course DDS, to be fair) was processing 700k, 800k plus decisions and dismissals a year. SSA's down to less than 600k, might be less than 500k claims a year now due to decreased apps and tackling the backlog. An extra 100K claims just wouldn't be that big a deal as OHO, etc. haven't lost too many employees since the times they were handling nearly twice as many claims a year as they are presently.
But opening up SSI to Puerto Rico...now that would be huge, esp. since SSI determinations, the month by month look at eligibility, etc. etc...that would be a nightmare for SSA.
Long haul symptoms are hard to measure, should lead to a quite a few early retirements, I need to look into that!
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