You Get What You Pay For

     Social Security has decided to post a Freedom of Information Act response they've given showing the rates at which the Alabama Disability Determination Section (DDS) paid for medical examinations and some other things they ordered. This is from 2020 so it's a bit out of date but take a look. I'm only posting the first page here. The whole thing which runs to 20 pages is linked above. The last page may surprise you a bit.

    Don't these rates seem a little low -- or maybe a lot low?

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Results Of An SSI Outreach Project

 

    From The Hill:

... SSA mailed outreach letters to individuals informing them of potential eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a program that provides modest cash benefits and access to Medicaid for low-income disabled and elderly individuals. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) forcefully pushed for the outreach during a Senate Finance hearing in 2021.   

Wyden’s push and SSA’s actions did much to help impoverished disabled and elderly citizens, with SSA indicating the outreach will increase lifetime SSI payments to these individuals by about $530 million. 

The cost of the outreach totaled $32 million, implying the ratio of benefits received by the public to the cost of the outreach is 17 to 1. Mailing informational letters, part of SSA’s Equity and Outreach initiatives, proved to be a highly efficient mechanism to help individuals in poverty.  ...

SSA’s outreach was targeted to Social Security beneficiaries who had very low Social Security benefit amounts and, therefore, might qualify for some SSI benefits. ...

    Here's a link to Social Security's report on this project.

Not Good News For Those Who Love Telework

 

    From WISH-TV:

A former Social Security Administration employee has been charged with one count of wire fraud after officials say he defrauded the organization for over three years. …

According to court documents, Christopher Markham, 40, had been employed by the administration and assigned to an office in Anderson. 

Between February 2019, and June 2022, documents say Markham “made it appear” he was teleworking his full-time job for the SSA during regular workdays. But instead, he was working as a home inspector for his own company, Markham Inspection Services. 

Markham continued to collect his full federal salary and benefits from the SSA at the time, attorneys said.

The release says Markham “routinely” performed home inspections, making it appear as though he was teleworking while working for the SSA, while hiding that he was not performing administrative work by allowing his wife and mother access to his Social Security Administration computer to send emails. …

Creamy Or Crunchy?

     From Nextgov/FCW:

...The longer arc of this agency is a phenomenally dedicated, committed, compassionate culture. [SSA staff has] been traumatized by the increased volume and nine years of steady staff reductions, given the lack of any Congressional attention to our budget or even the decency of our own appropriations hearings, said [Social Security Commissioner Martin] O'Malley” ...

The SSI program “purports to be a program of last resort,” but “forces the poorest of people to jump through hoops, stand on their head and gargle peanut butter in order to qualify for it,” he told lawmakers at a recent hearing. ...

For The Frustrated Social Security Disability Claimant

    My firm is starting a new blog directed at Social Security disability claimants, rather than Social Security professionals. It's called For The Frustrated Social Security Disability Claimant. We're just getting started but you can look in now.

Detecting Overpayments Due To Marriage

     From Impact of Undetected Marriages on Social Security Administration Payments, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

... Marriage can impact a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) beneficiary’s payment. We randomly selected 1 of 20 segments from the Supplemental Security Record (SSR) and Master Beneficiary Record (MBR). We identified 3 populations with name changes and sampled 250 individuals ...

SSA did not always take the necessary manual actions to properly update 38 of the 250 payment records for SSI recipients or OASDI beneficiaries when there was a name change because of marriage. Furthermore, SSA had not taken manual action on 11 SSI recipients or OASDI beneficiaries who changed their name via the iSSNRC application. We estimate SSA improperly paid 16,631 SSI recipients and OASDI beneficiaries approximately $240.9 million when there was a name change because of marriage. ...

When a person changes their name, SSA systems do not automatically determine whether they are receiving benefits. SSA does not know about a marriage until an individual reports it. ...

SSA explored the feasibility of using electronic marriage data to determine if OASDI beneficiaries changed their marital status. However, not all states/jurisdictions have a central repository of electronic marriage data, and many do not require, or collect, the marriage applicants’ Social Security number. ...

    There's a lot that Social Security could do to prevent overpayments if it had an adequate workforce. A different Inspector General might want to issue a report detailing how much money is being wasted due to inadequate staffing at the Social Security Administration.

    By the way, there's also the question of whether marriage should have as many effects as it does on Social Security and SSI benefits but that's another topic.

It's Taking Longer And Longer To Get Through To Social Security On The Phone

     From an article in the Daily Mail:

Closure Of Field Office Due To Staffing And Attrition Problems

     The union local that represents most Social Security employees is reporting that because of staffing and attrition issues Social Security is closing a field office in Southeast Cleveland that serves an area that is 94% black.

Interview With Commissioner

     Social Security has released a recording of an interview of Martin O'Malley, Commissioner of Social Security, by Jeffrey Buckner, Social Security's Assistant Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Communications. You can listen to the audio or read a transcript. Here's a little snippet: "The common sense is, you are not going to have satisfied customers if you have miserable and overworked employees."

Congressional Hearing On GPO/WEP

     The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing on Tuesday on the Government Pension Offset/Windfall Elimination Provision in the Social Security Act that deal with cases in which a person is eligible for both Social Security benefits and a pension based upon earnings not covered by FICA. Two of the four witnesses called for modification of the formulas used to determine the offset and another called for its elimination. As things stand now, it's highly unlikely that anything will be done about this.

New SSI Regs

     From a notice that Social Security will publish in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are finalizing our proposed rule to expand the definition of a public assistance (PA) household for purposes of our programs, particularly the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, to include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as an additional means-tested public income-maintenance (PIM) program. We are also revising the definition of a PA household from a household in which every member receives some kind of PIM payment to a household that has both an SSI applicant or recipient, and at least one other household member who receives one or more of the listed PIM payments (the any other definition). If determined to be living in a PA household, inside in-kind support and maintenance (ISM) would no longer need to be developed. The final rule will decrease the number of SSI applicants and recipients charged with ISM from others within their household. In addition, we expect this rule to decrease the amount of income we would deem to SSI applicants and recipients because we will no longer deem as income from ineligible spouses and parents who live in the same household: the value of the SNAP benefits that they receive; any income that was counted or excluded in figuring the amount of that payment; or any income that was used to determine the amount of SNAP benefits to someone else. These policy changes reduce administrative burden for low-income households and SSA. ...

PRW To Go Down From 15 Years To 5 On June 8

     From a notice that Social Security will publish in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are finalizing our proposed regulation to revise the time period that we consider when determining whether an individual’s past work is relevant for the purposes of making disability determinations and decisions. We are revising the definition of past relevant work (PRW) by reducing the relevant work period from 15 to 5 years. Additionally, we will not consider past work that started and stopped in fewer than 30 calendar days to be PRW. ...

DATES: This final rule will be effective on June 8, 2024.

Perfect Timing?

    Wouldn't now be the time to end the reconsideration step in Social Security disability determination? Over the years the objection to doing that has been that that it would throw too many cases to the hearing level but at the moment the backlogs are enormous at the initial and reconsideration steps and quite low at OHO. Doing it now would kill two birds with one stone. You'd dramatically reduce the backlogs at DDS and you'd give OHO something to do at a time when they're rapidly running out of work. It would create the "drinking from a fire hose" problem at OHO but I'd rather see that than have OHO lacking work while DDS struggles. 

    By the way, I have a vested interest in seeing this come to pass since I have a vested interest in seeing Social Security disability claims resolved expeditiously. Is that a bad thing?

 

Help For SSI Recipients

    The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final rules to add Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP or Food Stamps) to the definition of means-tested assistance programs for the purposes of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) computation. This will help reduce Social Security workloads and it will increase benefits for many SSI recipients. Expect to see this in the Federal Register soon.

SSNs To Disappear From Government Correspondence

      From Government Executive: 

 Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule Friday that would cull Social Security numbers any mailed document in an effort to prevent fraud.

The rule, which was published in the Federal Register, is part of the implementation of the 2017 Social Security Number Fraud Prevention Act and is designed to help protect the identifiers, which can be used in various forms of identity theft.  …

O'Malley Trashed

     Mark Warshawsky, of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, has written an op ed for the Baltimore Sun trashing Social Security's Commissioner, Martin O'Malley. Warshawsky blames O'Malley for asking for greater operating funds for Social Security. He says that the increasing number of people drawing Social Security benefits is large irrelevant to the agency's workload since it is mostly retirees who put little burden on the system. He says that the agency's real problem with getting its workload done is employees working from home and Social Security adding a new step in the process of disability review in 2019 and 2020. I don't know what new step he's talking about here. Of course, there's also the problem that in 2019 and 2020 O'Malley wasn't the Commissioner and Biden wasn't the President. Warshawsky goes on criticize what O'Malley is doing about overpayments and O'Malley's failure to adopt new regulations drafted while Republicans were in office to deny far more disability claimants. By the way, Republicans could have adopted those regulations but were no more eager than O'Malley to do so and for good reason. They're not justified by the data not to mention that all hell would break loose if they were adopted.

    By the way, not to knock the Baltimore Sun, which is a fine newspaper, but I'm betting that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal passed on this piece before the Sun finally agreed to publish it.

Backlog Improvement At OHO

    Dispositions continue to outpace receipts at Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), i.e.,  it's taking less time to get a hearing on a disability claim. The biggest reason is that cases are hung up at lower levels of review where backlogs are burgeoning. One day that dam will burst and OHO will be inundated.

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New ISM Rules

     The Social Security Administration will be publishing final rules tomorrow which provide:

... that a “business arrangement” exists, such that the SSI applicant or recipient is not considered to be receiving ISM [In Kind Support and Maintenance] in the form of room or rent, when the amount of monthly required rent for the property equals or exceeds the presumed maximum value (PMV).

    This sounds awfully tedious, and it is, but the estimate of Social Security's Chief Actuary is that it will increase SSI payments to about 41,000 people by an average of $132 a month.

    The new regulations will not go into effect until September 30, 2024.

    Unfortunately, there is nothing in these new regulations to help those who have an agreement to pay for their room and board once they get some income, that is, a loan of room and board. There are a lot of people in this situation and Social Security is treating them harshly.

Past Relevant Work Regs Advance

     The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final regulations on Intermediate Improvement to the Disability Adjudication Process, Including How we Consider Past Work. When published as a proposal these included a reduction in the time period for considering past relevant work from 15 years to 5. Expect to see the regulations in the Federal Register soon. 

    I hope the effective date isn't six months into the future.

Controversy Over Benefits For Children In Foster Care

     CBS News is reporting on the issue of what happens to Social Security dependent benefits for children who end up in foster care. In most cases, the state applies for and receives the dependent benefits. The child receives nothing. The child usually doesn't know this is happening or has happened. The theory is that the states need this money to pay for foster care. The contra argument is that the foster care is often terrible and it's not the state's money to begin with. This controversy has been around forever.

    I note the contrast with SSI child's benefits where a child's parent or guardian must establish a separate bank account to receive the benefits for a child and must show how the money was spent. Not so with Title II dependent benefits. The state just gobbles up the money.

    Social Security's new Commissioner, Martin O'Malley, is quoted in the piece as opposing what's going on. However, he has no authority that I can think of to do anything about this.

Former SSA Employee Sentenced For Fraud

      From the Times Leader of Scranton, Pennsylvania:

A former employee with Social Security Administration was sentenced to three years in federal prison for pandemic relief fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion sentenced Takiyah Gordon Austin, 47, formerly of Wilkes-Barre, to three years in federal prison and three years of supervised release on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam.

Austin was also ordered to pay $288,590 in restitution.

Austin, as a claims specialist, filed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims for ineligible recipients in exchange for payment from the individuals, according to a news release. …

Why Is SSA Still Relying On Ancient Occupational Data?

     David Weaver asks why Social Security doesn't do something about its reliance upon the ancient Dictionary of Occupational Titles in making disability determinations. Everyone agrees it's unreliable. People are being approved and denied based upon data collected more than 40 years ago. Why? My guess is that all of us are afraid of what comes next if we drop the DOT.

Where We’re At As A Nation

      From Reuters: 

Fact Check: Biden did not sign executive order to terminate Social Security.

Tidbits On The 800 Number And Overpayments

     WPXI, a television station in Pittsburgh, has been covering Social Security's overpayment problems. Here's some excerpts from a recent story they've run:

... We sat down with the new Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Martin O’Malley. ...

One of the most significant changes went into effect last Monday. It ensures anyone facing a new overpayment has at most,10 percent of their check withheld to recoup overpayment debt, not the 100-percent claw back the agency had been using; however, for the millions of people already facing overpayments, it’s not automatic. Due to staffing challenges, the solution is for beneficiaries to request a waiver or an adjustment by calling 1-800-772-1213. ...

11 Investigates decided to try that 1-800 number. The wait time when we called it was ‘greater than 60 minutes.’ We didn’t clog up the line by waiting to talk to a representative, but we did notice you can now request a call back instead of waiting on hold. ...

Commissioner O’Malley says you can file a waiver as many times as you want. If a beneficiary requests a rate lower than 10 percent to be withheld to recoup overpayment debt, it will be approved if the money can be repaid within 60 months or five years.  ...

    I had not heard about a call back feature for Social Security's 800 number. That might be an improvement. What experiences are others having with this?

    My guess is that the reporter misunderstood O'Malley or that the Commissioner misspoke about filing waiver requests as often as one likes. That requires clarification.

OHO Hearing Backlog At Its Lowest Level In 30 Years

     Posted by Social Security's Commissioner, Martin O'Malley, on Twitter:

Some good news: I’m proud to report that #SSA hit a 30-year low in the number of pending hearings as of last week, thanks to our dedicated staff! This is a major milestone, and I know we can do even more with sufficient, sustained funding

Attorney Fee Cap To Go To $9,200 This Fall And Be Indexed

     From a press release:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to raise the fee cap for claimants’ representatives, from $7,200 to $9,200, when they and their client agree to use what is known as a “fee agreement process.” This will be the first increase to the fee agreement cap since November 2022, when the cap went up from $6,000 to $7,200, after remaining the same for thirteen years.

The fee cap increase is scheduled to take effect this Fall. The agency also plans to tie future increases to the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). SSA will publish notice of this change in the Federal Register in April in advance of the effective date. ...

A New EM On Covid

     The Social Security Administration has posted Emergency Message EM-21032 REV 2 on Evaluating Cases with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). It's a classic Social Security directive to staff that means absolutely nothing. They want to tell you that, yes, they're considering long Covid but there are zero details on what that means in practice and certainly nothing that could be interpreted as a standard that the agency must meet. The first priority is to make sure that no one at Social Security could be said to have failed to abide by the Emergency Message. It's impossible to fail to meet the standard since there is no standard. Is there one person at Social Security whose job it is to draft this sort of pabulum? 

    In the real world everyone with long Covid will be denied at initial and recon and some will be approved at the hearing level.

    I'm still not seeing clients complaining of long Covid. I'm beginning to think that long Covid is definitely a thing but it's mostly a thing for those who are too old to be applying for Social Security disability benefits.