Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on payments to attorneys and others for representing claimants before the agency. The data was already available but they've added charts. Below are a couple of them.
Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on payments to attorneys and others for representing claimants before the agency. The data was already available but they've added charts. Below are a couple of them.
more interesting would be "payment per case". Overall payment numbers are not very illustrative, except to show general trends.
ReplyDeleteWould be nice to see these charts next to the "claims allowed" charts for the same period.
ReplyDeleteWould be nice to open the report and see those charts are also there.
DeleteIn other breaking news, water is wet!
ReplyDeleteLess than 4% unemployment always leads to a down turn in dib claims and awards.
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ReplyDeleteI’m involved with SSA attorney payments. One pet peeve I have is that representatives routinely submit multiple and identical SSA 1696, and fee agreements, on the same case.
So when I process, I have to open and read each SSA1696 and fee agreement, to make sure it’s not a new attorney, and that fee agreement language hasn’t changed.
What a waste of time this is, and it adds up. I could process more cases without this needless task. While attorneys may feel that submitting multiple forms helps to guarantee they will be paid, it slows down processing.
Just one fee agreement and one SSA1696 per case, please.
To @1:20pm 7/27/2023: If SSA acknowledged and processed the 1696s/fee agreements timely, there would be no need for representatives to submit multiple 1696s/fee agreements. SSA is so far behind in processing these, and often fails to respond to phone inquiries, that it's like the 1696s/fee agreements are in a "black hole" and the representative does not know if SSA received the first one, so sends another. It's much more unnecessary work for the representative, but necessary in case the first submission is never found. SSA fails to communicate and that increases the workload for representatives and SSA employees.
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