Misleading AP Story On Overpayments

     Here's the lead sentence from the AP article on the Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on overpayments in Social Security's Disability Insurance Benefits program "Social Security overpaid nearly half the people receiving disability benefits over the past decade, according to a government watchdog, raising questions about the management of the cash-strapped program."

     This could have been the AP lead sentence "Only 3% of Social Security disability benefits are paid incorrectly and the Social Security Administration is able to recoup 85% of the benefits paid incorrectly." That's also what the OIG report showed. Of course, that wouldn't have been the lead sentence because it's boring. It also wouldn't have been the lead sentence because the AP writer was clued into the OIG report by some Republican operative who heavily emphasized the "nearly half" part even though it's misleading. 

     Let's say there was a study showing that over a 10 year time period 22% of drivers were caught driving drunk at some time. There isn't such a study as far as I know but let's say there was. Would it be fair and reasonable to have the lead sentence on an article about that study that reads "Nearly a quarter of all people who drove over the last ten years were found to be driving drunk, raising questions about law enforcement on our dangerous highways." I would say no. First, 22% isn't nearly a quarter, any more than 44% is nearly half. More important, if 22% of drivers have been caught driving drunk, law enforcement is doing its job in catching people driving drunk. There's no reason to question what law enforcement is doing. For the same reason, there's no reason to question the Social Security Administration's efforts to detect and prevent overpayments. Most important, the hypothetical lead sentence is misleading since it suggests that at any given time that nearly one quarter of drivers are drunk and that's not what the hypothetical study showed. By the same token, the OIG didn't show that at any given time 44% of benefits recipients are being overpaid as the AP story implies. The AP story is misleading.

Television Coverage For Kentucky Fiasco

     The local television station is covering the fiasco in Kentucky.

An Overpayment Story

     Woman thinks she's been overpaid by Social Security. She contacts the agency and is told to send them a check. She does so but later receives a notice saying she really was entitled to the money. It only took eight months and several phone calls to get Social Security to refund the money to her according to a story on a Michigan television station. The story doesn't say it but there's a real possibility that she'll eventually receive another notice from Social Security saying that she really was overpaid! You think I'm kidding but I've seen it happen.

As I Predicted

     As I predicted, at least one media outlet has tried to make a big deal out of 18 sexual predators receiving Social Security benefits. Michael Hiltzik calls them out on trying to puff up such a trivial matter.

They're Starting To Worry That Democrats Might Be Serious About Increasing Social Security

     The Wall Street Journal is starting to be concerned that Democrats will actually run on increasinging Social Security benefits. Their concern about the effects on the budget of increasing Social Security might sound sincere until you realize that the Wall Street Journal always supports any tax cut regardless of the consequences.

Hiltzik On 60 Minutes Piece

     Michael Hiltzik didn't think much of the 60 Minutes piece on the problems with Social Security's Death Master File (DMF). Here are a few excerpts from his column:

[60 Minutes] implied that it had turned up this scandal through its own digging, so it didn't mention that errors in the DMF is a hardy journalistic perennial, like reports on how bad the traffic is in your town or sweeps-week TV pieces on gourmet restaurants flunking sanitary inspections. ...

Most news reports on the DMF errors have a few things in common. They all seem to reflect the assumption that keeping an error-free master death list should be easy. And they blame the Social Security Administration for the flaws. ...

The biggest hole in the "60 Minutes" segment was the lack of suggestions about what to do about what is plainly an enormous headache for people wrongly listed as deceased. But it's not rocket science. To begin with, although the DMF is public, Congress should outlaw its use by any financial institution to take action against an account holder without verifying the information independently. ...

The news program also might have asked what it would cost the Social Security Administration to make the Death Master File rock-solid and error-free, and whether Congress would be willing to appropriate the money. Expecting the agency to maintain a perfect list, when the roll was never designed to become the raw material for bank and credit decisions, is ridiculous--especially in an era when Congressional cuts to the agency's administrative budget has forced it to close field offices that service tens of millions of benefit enrollees. ...

Should Social Security continue to do its most important job of serving its beneficiaries, or should it respond to blather from Congress and inflated headlines from "60 Minutes"?

This Matters Far More Than Some Stupid WSJ Op Ed

     Is it easier to win a World Series than to get on Social Security disability?

Hit Piece In The WSJ

     The Wall Street Journal has an op ed piece titled "Disability Claim Denied? Find The Right Judge." It's behind a pay wall. I'll just extract a few phrases and sentences to give readers the flavor of the piece:

• "morphed into a benefit bonanza that costs taxpayers billions of dollars more than it should"
• "judicial impartiality has declined significantly"
• "Congress should also institute 15-year term limits for judges"
• "Congress can limit this gamesmanship by allowing only one application per claimant in a three-year period."
• "Decades ago workers ages 50 or 55 might have been considered retiring, but this is no longer generally the case. Novel job-training programs also make it easier than ever for workers to move into new fields and make up for low levels of education, and new disability criteria would account for these changes."  
  

     Michael Hiltzik takes down some of the nonsense in this piece but there's so much more. I'll limit myself to one sentence in the piece. What are these "novel job-training programs" that make it easier for handicapped people to move into different fields? I have no idea what he's talking about. Older people are less adaptable. That's just a fact of human existence. There's no program, old or new, that can change that. Making up for low levels of education? Adult basic education has been around for a very long time for those who are able to take advantage of it. The problem, however, is that the most common reason for people having low educational attainments is that they have limited cognitive abilities. That's an unpleasant truth that both liberals and conservatives prefer not to talk about. Sure, the limited cognitive abilities often have their genesis in childhood poverty but limited cognitive abilities are largely irreparable regardless of their cause. I'd be happy to substitute IQ tests for educational attainments in disability determination.

Prospects For Disability Trust Fund Looking Up

     The Baltimore Sun is running an article claiming that "The number of people receiving disability insurance payments from the Social Security Administration declined last year for the first time since 1983 ..." I'm not sure how they figured that since the website of the Office of Chief Actuary at Social Security shows an increase of about 12,000 rather than a decrease. However the article is correct in showing that the number of claims filed and applications approved is down sharply over the last four years. The number drawing benefits has actually declined over the last four months and there's a good chance that this decline is a trend that will continue for several years as baby boomers who went on disability benefits a few years ago age into retirement benefits. Interestingly, Stephen Goss, Social Security's Chief Actuary, is quoted in the article as saying that "The disability applications we have coming in now are even lower than we were assuming", suggesting the possibility of some change in the next projection for the Disability Trust Fund, due out sometime later this year.

"Bipolar Is Like The Latest Fad"

    From Media Matters:

Fox News Radio host Tom Sullivan told a caller who said she suffered from bipolar disorder that her illness is "something made up by the mental health business" and just "the latest fad." When the caller told Sullivan that she "would not be alive today" if she hadn't received mental health treatment, Sullivan wondered if "maybe somebody's talked you into feeling and thinking this way." 

Sullivan, who is also a frequent Fox Business contributor and guest anchor, began his January 28 program by complaining that people with mental illness have figured how to "game the system" by receiving disability benefits. "They're mostly government employees and they know how to do it," he added. Sullivan also defended Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) controversial and false statement that "Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts." ... 

"I've got to tell you, if you haven't been told, I will tell you. I think bipolar is like the latest fad. Everybody and their brother is getting diagnosed with bipolar. And last time I checked, we all have good days and we all have bad. And I don't consider that an illness. And I don't consider it a disability." 

He added that bipolar disorder is "something made up by the mental health business just to be able to give people prescriptions and keep them coming in, and keeping you -- paying them money." ... 

     We can hope that Mr. Sullivan isn't much of an opinion maker but there's no doubt that his views are already shared by many people. The problem I face on a regular basis is that his views are shared by many who are themselves suffering from serious mental illness. Even though their lives are severely disrupted by mental illness, they do not believe that they could be mentally ill because they don't believe that mental illness is real or because they believe that real mental illness could only be something vastly more severe than what they suffer. In the most extreme cases, individuals who are at a high suicide risk or who are actively hallucinating or delusional will consider it ridiculous when I and others attempt to persuade them to get under psychiatric care. For that matter, Mr. Sullivan sounds a little delusional himself.

A Collective Yawn

     I can't find any sign that the news media are picking up the story of indictments for alleged Social Security disability fraud in Puerto Rico. Maybe local media in Puerto Rico are covering this but even Fox News isn't covering the story.

    So far, I'm not sensing any momentum behind the campaign to cut Social Security disability.

But Does He Meet The "Hop Out Of A Truck" Test?

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Pithy

     The Wonkette title says it all: New GOP Congress Pretty Sure All You ‘Disabled’ ‘Folks’ Are Fakers Anyway, So Suck It.

TV Station Covers Hearing Backlog

     A Nevada television station is continuing to cover Social Security's serious hearing backlog.

When You Don't Know What Else To Say, Just Use The Old Pending Litigation Dodge

     From the Washington Post:

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents. 

But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in recent months, some of those same taxpayers have since received new demands from Social Security, asserting that the debts remain and seeking repayment. ... 

Asked to explain the about-face, Social Security officials said they would respond only to written questions. Late Friday, four days after The Post provided questions, the agency issued this statement from spokesman Mark Hinkle: “We are finalizing our review of the Treasury offset program, but cannot discuss specifics due to the pending litigation.”

TV Station Reports On Hearing Backlogs

     A Nashville television station is reporting on the huge backlogs and long waiting times to get a hearing on a Social Security disability claim. Expect many more similar reports. The backlogs are approaching record levels.

Washington Post's Bleak Take On Social Security Hearings

     The Washington Post has an article on Social Security's huge backlog of disability hearings. Here are a couple of excerpts to give an idea of the article's bleak, despairing tone:

In this case, the [disability hearing] system became, in effect, too big to fix: Reforms were hugely expensive and so logistically complicated that they often stalled, unfinished. What’s left now is an office that costs taxpayers billions and still forces applicants to wait more than a year — often, without a paycheck — before delivering an answer about their benefits. ... 

“I really wonder if what we’re doing is effective at all. If it helps at all,” [Social Security Administrative a Law Judge] Pennock said, after a day of hearing cases and trying to reduce her share of the backlog. “If, based on the amount of evidence we get, my decision is any better than flipping a coin.”

     A reader could only come to the conclusion that not only is the Social Security disability hearing process broken but that it is unfixable. The only solution would be to abolish Social Security hearings and maybe to abolish Social Security disability benefits themselves. It is the right wing view of government as hopeless, something to be largely eliminated since it can't be reformed. 

     Disability determination is a messy business but many worthwhile things in life are messy, including mankind itself. Disability benefits are an essential lifeline for millions. Without hearings Sovial Security disability would lack legitimacy. If the hearings were abolished, they would have to be restarted almost immediately. There would be too many horrible injustices that couldn't be righted.                      
     There is a simple solution for Social Security's hearing backlog -- more resources. That's been done before. We know it works. It was working until tea party Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. Everything else has been tried without success. 

It's Got To Be Opioids And Fraud!

     The Birmingham, AL News recently ran an article trying to explain the fact that Alabama has one of the highest rates of Social Security disability benefits receipients in the country. The explanations that the newspaper came up with were high rates of opioid usage, high percentage of the labor force in manufacturing jobs, fraud and the fact that many people qualify for Social Security disability benefits based on "muscle pain." Apparently, the authors of the article didn't understand exactly what the word "musculoskeletal"means.

     All newspaper articles are reductive. This one is more so than most. The reporters really should have concentrated more upon one factor they identified, the high percentage of the Alabama labor force in manufacturing jobs. The article doesn't explain the connection, perhaps because the reporters didn't understand it; perhaps because they were in a rush to get to drug abuse and fraud as possible explanations. It's simple, though. Manufacturing jobs are more physically demanding than office jobs. They put workers at greater risk for workplace injuries and repetitive motion disorders, like worn out shoulders, carpal tunnel syndrome, bad knees, etc. It's harder for a sick or injured worker to return to a manufacturing job because of the higher physical demands of the work. See, that's not hard to explain. It's not a bit controversial, either. Also, the reporters should have talked about the low educational attainments and poor work skills of the Alabama population and the poor health care available to low income people in the state. All of those contribute mightily to the incidence of disability but why bother talking about such boring explanations when you can talk about drugs and fraud? And, by the way, workplace injuries and repetitive motion disorders tend to be painful. Opioids are often prescribed for such disorders for good reason.

Post Writer Pays Attention To Social Security Service Problems

     Joe Davidson at the Washington Post writes about the recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) on the problems that the agency is having delivering service to the public with a dramatically smaller workforce.

     My gut feeling is that sooner or later Social Security's service delivery problems are going to blow up in the same way as the VA's problems blew up. The only question is who gets the blame.

Is It Fair?

     Is it fair for Social Security to demand repayment of an overpayment that was the agency's fault? A television station thinks it's not.