Today, the Social Security Administration released its first Equity Action Plan, supporting President Biden’s whole-of-government equity agenda to advance equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity for all.
On January 20, 2021, The President signed an Executive Order, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. The Executive Order requires all Federal agencies “to pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and other people who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”
“Social Security’s programs touch the lives of nearly every American, providing income security for the diverse populations we serve, including people facing barriers, people with disabilities, people who are widowed, retirees, and their families,” said Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “Systemic barriers may prevent people who need our programs the most from accessing them. Our Equity Action Plan will help to reduce these barriers and ensure people have access to our services.”
Social Security’s Equity Action Plan includes:
- Increasing collection of race and ethnicity data to help understand whether programs are equitably serving applicants and beneficiaries,
- Revising policies and practices to expand options for service delivery,
- Ensuring equitable access for unrepresented claimants in the disability application process,
- Decreasing burdens for people who identify as gender diverse or transgender in the Social Security number card application process, and
- Increasing access to research grant programs for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions and procurement opportunities for small and disadvantaged businesses.
To learn more about the actions outlined in the Equity Action Plan, please visit www.socialsecurity.gov/open/materials/SSA-EO-13985-Equity-Action-Plan.pdf. For more information about efforts to redress systemic barriers in policies and programs to advance equity for all, visit www.whitehouse.gov/equity.
Here's a little from the Equity Action Plan that will be of immediate interest to some readers:
... Some claimants get attorney or non-attorney representatives to assist with this process. However, representatives’ fees are based on awarded back benefits. This is a disincentive for representing SSI Disability applicants in favor of DI applicants, whose benefits are typically higher. There is evidence that although African American people are more likely to have a disability, they are less likely to be approved for disability benefits than White people. Considering this, we will assess whether African American claimants are less likely to have a representative than White claimants, research whether claimants who have representatives are more likely to receive disability benefits, reach out to claimants who do not have representatives to prepare them for their disability hearings and inform them of their right to representation, and work with professional associations of representatives to create incentives to increase their representation of disability program applicants. ...
[W]e are evaluating whether the current maximum fee of $6,000 that attorney and non-attorney representatives receive under the fee agreement process is enough. ...
And on another topic:
... [W]e will:
Explore establishing a Customer Experience (CX) office that reports directly to the Office of the Commissioner. ...
That doesn't sound like an ombudsman or even a customer service office but it could be a step forward. Social Security has expended much effort telling the public how it must do business with the agency and more or less blaming the public for lousy service at the agency, as in telling the public that if they'd only just use online services, their service would be so much better, without noticing that the agency's online services are, on the whole, lousy and that many members of the public wouldn't be able to use them even if they were terrific. Quit blaming the customer.
5 comments:
Interesting. Not saying it's a wrong or right assumption, but that logic presumes more African-American claimants file for SSI than DIB. I have not seen a particular difference in the type of claim being filed based on race. I would also suspect SSI claimants on average have less treatment, due to having less means and that could at least cause some disparity of award rate between T2 and T16. Given the administrative delay, DIB and SSI are generally going to hit the fee cap by the time of any award in most cases, so if other reps are doing that...does not really make sense. Anyways, not a bad thing to look into regardless.
Also, I really hope they are excluding concurrent cases from their assumptions, because nearly any T2 award is going to result in a denial of T16 (other than the 5 month waiting period, and the rare case where the PIA is less than SSI).
There was thread on here a a few wks ago about an EM concerning a potential increase in fees...now there is a study being done on it. All of this sounds great, but has anyone heard from a single credible source that increasing the fee cap actually has any traction? Let's face it, when the political landscape changes (and it will), we'll be waiting another 2-4 yrs to even have a chance of something like this going through.
It sounds like amongst the Bureaucratic Gobblygook, they are laying a foundation for saying they are increasing the fee cap in order to enhance representation for low income claimants and SSI claimants generally.
While I am all in favor of increasing the cap, the fact is that the cap rarely applies in SSI cases because of the limited retroactivity in SSI claims and the lower amounts of benefits. Also, not taking SSI cases at all was a thing when there was no withholding at all to pay representatives in SSI cases but since that ended many years ago, I am not aware of very many reps that don't take SSI cases if they are full time in handling SS cases.
Raising the fee cap is needed for all cases, most particularly the Title II cases where the back benefits frequently do cause the cap to be in play. Firms in this area are being whipsawed by increasing costs and lower pay rates. The small local practitioners are being forced out of business. All that will be left are the national firms with, imho, a lower quality of representation across the board and, in more cases than for local reps, a refusal to even handle the lower paying SSI cases anyway.
After all these years of the cap frozen, it is time.
$6,000 in 2009 (the last time SSA increased attorney's fees) is worth $7,957 today. The max fee ought to be at least $8,000.
Here in Mississippi, we don't get a lot of maximum fee cases, but I would still like to see this. I agree that the max fee should be at least $8,000. Maybe if working conditions were improved for workers, they would stop trying to get people to do online stuff they can't, and sending them out the door with forms they can't complete.
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