From the Urban Institute:
SSA’s forthcoming regulation includes three major components:
- Replacing outdated occupational data: SSA plans to adopt the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS) to replace the obsolete Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), a move with bipartisan support.
- Implementing data from ORS: SSA must make many decisions on how best to implement and interpret ORS data, such as determining whether sufficient jobs exist at various skill and exertional levels that will directly affect eligibility outcomes.
- Age as a Factor: SSA is considering changes to how age, education, and past work experience influence disability determinations. These changes would disproportionately affect older workers.
Estimated Impact:
- The anticipated regulation could reduce eligibility for new applicants to the SSDI program by as much as 20 percent overall, and up to 30 percent among older workers. The potential impact on the SSI program is unclear.
- A 10% reduction in SSDI eligibility could result in 500,000 people losing access over 10 years including 80,000 widows and children. An additional 250,000 beneficiaries could lose eligibility for part of the period.
- A 10% reduction would reduce benefits by $82 billion, with ripple effects on Medicare and Medicaid eligibility.
- Many denied older workers may claim early retirement benefits, reducing their lifetime income by up to 30%. …
9 comments:
Any idea what is might be? Move GRID rule up by 5 yrs (need 55 for sedentary)?
If the GRID rules were eliminated or revised, we could potentially see judges who now approve 10-20% approve 0-5%.
Warshawsky has publicly commented on the GRIDs issue numerous times. He led the the writing of this NPRM under the first Trump administration. This same NPRM is now being updated by SSA. In the original NPRM (5 plus years ago), the GRIDs were eliminated. No manual/heavy labor after age 60. There will be no need to evaluate for transferable skills. ORS in its current release cannot address transferable skills, because the task lists have not been analyzed or released in any ORS data release to date.
The reduction in awards will be more than 20% more likely than not.
POTUS repeatedly promised no cuts. Moving the grid rule ages is a massive cut to a very popular program. Mid-terms next year with close margins to hold congress. Are they that dumb? Let’s see.
So an older disabled homeless population, is what it sounds like. Finding a job over 50 has been proven to be difficult, especially with the job numbers the way they've been. There are already too many elderly or semi-elderly people on the streets. Throw a disability in there TOO and it's going to be a sad mess they'll have created.
Repeating Reagan's purging of the disability rolls of the early 1980s which became a PR disaster for the agency when a significant number of terminated beneficiaries committed suicide.
You took that statement to mean they wouldn't cut disability beneficiary recipient numbers? They don't care about those people. As far as this administration is concerned, most disability beneficiaries are just lazy layabouts who shouldn't be on the rolls in the first place, so this is just more cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in their eyes.
"There will be no need to evaluate for transferable skills"
The transferability/work adjustment assessment is in the statute...they cannot waive away legislation with regulatory rulemaking. I am sure they will try, or mistakenly stumble into violating the statute in obvious ways, but I doubt this is a public fight they will want to expend effort on.
Please enlighten me if you will, but won’t extreme action on the Grids require congressional action because they were based on the congressional reform bill from 1967 which was intended to lessen the burden of getting benefits on the aged population. I have read his proposal from 2015 and he himself concedes this and says five years of grid eligibility could be trimmed off by regulation without new legislation. At same me point is SSA not legislating as opposed to formulating regulation in line with the intent of existing legislation? Any congressmen want to step up and vote for this?
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