OIG Report On Allegations Of Medical Consultant Irregularities

From a report of Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) produced in response to a Congressional request:

On March 25, 2009, your staff asked that we review allegations by the American Association of Social Security Disability Consultants (AASSDC) that (1) medical consultant (MC) assessments were altered and/or destroyed in the disability determination services, (2) MCs were pressured to produce specific assessments, and (3) disability examiners were seeking certain MCs to obtain specific assessments. ...

Of the two MCs who indicated an assessment was altered, each described one-time occurrences. In one of these cases, the MC prepared a complex assessment not taken into consideration when making the final disability determination. This occurred in a DDS with SDM authority and a supervisor noted that they did not consider the MC’s assessment. In the other instance, the MC did not give details other than it occurred over 2 years ago. ...

Of the 189 MCs who participated in our review,

• 182 indicated assessments were not deleted, and

• 7 indicated assessments were deleted.

Of the seven MCs who indicated an assessment was deleted, six reported
it was a one time occurrence. For example, an MC indicated an assessment was deleted because a more experienced consultant provided another assessment. The MC was notified and made aware of why the DE removed his assessment from the disability folder.

Edwin Abel Passes

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Edwin G. Abel Jr., 75, of Wallingford, a former Social Security Administration executive, died of sepsis Friday, May 28, at Wallingford Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. ...

Mr. Abel began his career with Social Security in 1960 as a claims representative trainee in Baltimore.

He became branch manager in Bennettsville, S.C., in 1968, when the South Carolina Jaycees named him its outstanding young man of the year, his son Ted said.

From 1969, he was in the agency's Philadelphia office, becoming an area director in the Office of Disability. In the 1980s, he was director of operations at the agency's Mid-Atlantic Program Service Center. He retired in 2007.

These obits are not easy to find. I would run them more often if I could.

You've Got To Read This

This whole article is fascinating. I'll just give you a teaser. From The Oregonian:

An attorney and a judge, bitter enemies, arrive at an elevator at the same time. They argue over who gets to ride down, then scuffle. Police arrest the attorney, who slaps a restraining order on the judge.

Sounds like a lame lawyer joke. But no. The flap occurred recently at Social Security's customarily sedate hearing office in downtown Portland, the climactic moment in a testy three-year war of words between a disability claims attorney and an administrative law judge.

Let me generalize a bit. This ridiculous situation vividly demonstrates the need for a full set of disciplinary rules for those who represent Social Security claimants. Most non-attorney representatives and attorneys working outside the states in which they are licensed act responsibly but not all of them.

House Majority Whip Supports Means Testing

From Firedoglake:

Mike Stark caught up with Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn and asked him where he stood with regard to the Deficit Commission and potential plans to cut Social Security benefits....

CLYBURN To be fair — and I may get beaten up by some people on this, and that’s all right, I get beaten up a lot. But I think to be fair, you cannot possibly not modify a program that at the time of its enactment, we had 17 people working for every one person that was a retiree. Today, you have about three people working for every one person that is a retiree. Now that is unsustainable. ...

STARK: Is means testing the fairest way?

CLYBURN: I think that’s one way we ought to be…we ought to be discussing means testing. I think that those of us who operate at the income level that I operate at ought to be means tested.

New Hearing Loss Listings

Social Security will publish new hearing loss Listings in the Federal Register tomorrow, to be effective sixty days later. Meeting a Listing is one way that an individual may qualify for Social Security disability benefits.

I have had to explain to my staff many times why it was that I was yelling at one of my clients. It was not because I was mad. It was because my client was stone deaf -- but still did not meet a Listing for hearing loss. Make no mistake about it, the hearing loss Listings are harsh. I wish the people who draft these Listings had to have meetings with people who have hearing loss that is even in the neighborhood of the Listings.

Regulation Of Interstate Practice Of Social Security Law

I saw this first on the CONNECT board. From a law firm blog:

Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Carpenter,___N.W.2d ___, 2010 WL 1507633 (Iowa 2010)

Brief Summary
An attorney had practiced in Iowa under a state multijurisdictional practice (MJP) rule allowing lawyers licensed in another jurisdiction to handle certain federal law matters. In a case of first impression for the Iowa Supreme Court, the Court used its equitable power to enjoin the attorney from practicing in Iowa under any rule for two years as a result of trust account and other ethics violations.

There are many law firms that operate across state borders in Social Security cases. There are issues concerning the advertising of some of these firms. The advertising may meet the requirements of the law firm's home state but not the requirements of another state in which the law firm is operating.

Here is another summary of the case.

Memorial Day

Trying To Stir Up Trouble

Our old friend Andrew Biggs is up to it again. Biggs was put in a research position at Social Security by the Bush White House in order to work on Social Security privatization plans. Biggs campaigned with President Bush for the partial privatization of Social Security while working at Social Security. He later received a recess appointment as Deputy Commissioner of Social Security.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has now published a study by Biggs claiming that people born in 1947 are the new "Notch Babies." Biggs bases this, somehow, on the facts that there was no cost of living adjustment for this year's Social Security benefits while there was a large COLA the year before. Basically, those retiring a year earlier benefited from the big COLA while those retiring later do not.

The "Notch Baby" reference is an obvious attempt to invoke an earlier, similarly bogus, controversy. Anyone who is trying to be taken seriously would stay miles away from the term "Notch Baby," a fact that Biggs knows well.

It is impossible for the human mind to devise any system that guarantees that there will never be anyone complaining of unfairness, a fact well known to lawyers like myself. Social Security COLAs are designed to be and are a neutral system. Any alternative system would produce its own allegations of unfairness. Certainly, what Biggs would prefer, a privatized system, would produce massive unfairness.

Fortunately, so far, Biggs' study, unlike the "Notch Baby" controversy, appears to have gained no traction.