It’s Easy To Get Your Social Security Problems Resolved — Just Get A TV Station Involved

     Social Security stopped a man’s benefits benefits because they say he’s in prison but a TV station found him at home saying he’s never been in prison. He couldn’t get the agency to restore his benefits. Twenty-four hours after the TV station starts asking Social Security about the case, the benefits are resumed. Funny how that happens.

All Part Of The Plan

     From Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times:

When the Trump tax cut was on the verge of being enacted, I called it “the biggest tax scam in history,” and made a prediction: deficits would soar, and when they did, Republicans would once again pretend to care about debt and demand cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. 

Sure enough, the deficit is soaring. And this week Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, after declaring the surge in red ink “very disturbing,” called for, you guessed it, cuts in “Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.” He also suggested that Republicans might repeal the Affordable Care Act — taking away health care from tens of millions — if they do well in the midterm elections. 

Any political analyst who didn’t see this coming should find a different profession. After all, “starve the beast” — cut taxes on the rich, then use the resulting deficits as an excuse to hack away at the safety net — has been G.O.P. strategy for decades. ...

Astrue Trashes Democratic Candidate At House Hearing

     Former Commissioner of Social Security, Michael Astrue, testified before some House subcommittee yesterday. The article I'm getting this from says it was the "Health Subcommittee" but the House Ways and Means Committee site doesn't show its Health Subcommittee having a hearing this week. Anyway, Astrue was there to trash Donald Berwick, who is running for governor of Massachusetts. Berwick used to be head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Astrue was blaming Berwick for the terrible rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

     The big problem with Astrue's criticism of Berwick is that Berwick left his position as head of CMS twenty-three months ago. Maybe the early planning for the Affordable Care Act rollout was lacking but most of the rollout preparation happened after Berwick left office. How much of the responsibility can one legitimately lay on Berwick? It's also clear from the description of Astrue's testimony that Astrue simply has a personal distaste for Berwick. I don't know whether Astrue's feelings are justified but they are irrelevant to the question of responsibility for the rollout of the Affordable Care Act or Berwick's qualifications for governor of Massachusetts.

Getting A New Government Program Off The Ground Is Tough

     The start-up problems that the Health Care Exchanges are experiencing are not without precedent. As Arthur Delaney writing for the Huffington Report notes there were serious start-up problems with Social Security. Early on, a management expert told the nascent Social Security Board that it should notify Congress that it couldn't run the program! The management expert was told to get back to work. I think you can guess the rest of the story.

More Money For Social Security's Administrative Budget? No ACA Role For SSA Is Certain

     Below is language from the bill set to be passed tonight (yes, it's certain to pass) to resolve the government shutdown-debt ceiling crisis:

Of the amounts made available by section 101 for ‘‘Social Security Administration, Limitation on  Expenses’’ for the cost associated with continuing disability reviews under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act and for the cost associated with conducting redeterminations of eligibility under title XVI of the Social Security Act, $273,000,000 is provided to meet the terms of section 251(b)(2)(B)(ii)(III) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, as amended, and $469,639,000 is additional new budget authority specified for purposes of section 251(b)(2)(B) of such Act.

     So what does this mean? I won't pretend to know but I like the sound of "additional new budget authority." However, interpreting this is difficult. Generally, an "authorization" doesn't actually give an agency money. It just allows a later "appropriation" which actually gives the agency the money. Social Security, however, is a special case. Social Security technically never receives an appropriation since the money comes out of the trust funds. Social Security has a "limitation on administrative expenditures" -- the LAE. I don't know what the language means but I just can't see a point in giving Social Security a meaningless "authorization" in this bill.
     By the way, I had speculated earlier that the media reports that this bill would include a new income verification requirement for insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare, if you insist) might mean a role for Social Security in administering the ACA. A stringent income verification requirement might require Social Security's resources but Social Security won't have a role since the income verification requirement in the bill to be passed tonight is essentially meaningless. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) plans to use commercial databases for income verification. That doesn't sound too workable to me. We've seen the problems with Social Security's Death Master File, for instance, which is about as accurate as a big database can be, but which still contains enough errors to cause serious problems for those wrongly declared dead. However, for better or worse, the income verification process under the ACA is DHHS' baby. Social Security isn't involved, at least not so far.

     Update: The bill has now passed the House and will shortly be signed by the President.

SSA To Have Role In "Obamacare" Income Verification??

     News reports say that one element of an agreement to resolve the government shutdown will be a more extensive income verification process for the insurance subsidies that are a key part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To this point, the plan has been to rely upon "available electronic data sources" to verify income. The plan has been that Social Security would not have a role in this process. There are no details at this point on the more extensive income verification process planned for the ACA. I would guess that those states that have established their own health insurance exchanges under the ACA will be asked to do this but they may balk. More importantly, most states have not established their own health care exchanges.

     If we're not going to rely just upon "available electronic data sources" to verify income and if the federal government is going to do it in most states, how will the federal government do it? It seems to me that you would need an agency that has extensive experience in income verification and which has an extensive network of field offices. It's just rank speculation on my part but that description seems to fit the Social Security Administration and no one else.