A Modest Idea On Getting Help To Claimants

     I wrote about the reach, and perhaps overreach, of Social Security's controls on fees for representation  before the agency in 2021. I still think what I suggested at that time would be a good idea:

The Social Security Act says that fees for representing claimants must be approved by the agency. 42 U.S.C. §406(a)(1). The agency has interpreted this provision broadly. Its position is that charging a fee just to help a claimant file a claim or an appeal must be approved by the agency. As a result no one is providing these services for a fee apart from those offering contingent fee contracts for much broader representation. This leaves a large number of people to seek services that the Social Security Administration is unable to supply. Social Security should announce that that merely helping a claimant file a claim or an appeal is not the sort of representation for which fee approval is required. This would allow attorneys and H.&R. Block and whomever else to provide these services for modest fees. As an alternative, if the agency still wants to control these fees, the Social Security Act provides authority for the Commissioner to simply approve a maximum fee. ("The Commissioner of Social Security may, by rule and regulation, prescribe the maximum fees which may be charged for services performed in connection with any claim ...) The Commissioner could announce that the maximum fee to help file a claim is, let's say, $250 and the maximum fee for helping to file an appeal is $100. Those providing these services would not have to submit a fee petition. I will concede that this suggestion helps those with some money more than it helps the destitute but one would hope that even the poor could come up with the modest fees I'm talking about. It would also free up agency personnel to provide more help for poor claimants. If Social Security cannot itself provide these services to all who need them, why stand in the way of others providing these services for modest fees?

Interview With Commissioner

     The AARP has published an interview it conducted with Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley. As you would expect from one with a political background,  O'Malley touts his agency's accomplishments. I would certainly agree that the changes in how Social Security deals with overpayments are an accomplishments. However, the accomplishments in providing service to claimants have not been across the board. As a few workloads gets diminished, others increase. It's all you can do when you lack adequate budget resources.

    There's one thing about the interview that I can't figure out. At one point the interviewer mentions that O'Malley is the first Social Security Commissioner who has served in elective office. O'Malley corrects him saying "Second! I’ll show you the wax figure down the hall." Who was that other Social Security Commissioner who had previously served in elective office? Is the "wax figure" business just some odd figure of speech or some sort of reality?

SSI Resource Limits Are Brutal

     From National Public Radio:

The thing that got Karen Williams into trouble was that she tried to do the responsible thing and bought a life insurance policy that would pay for her funeral. ...

Williams, who is disabled and doesn’t work, relied upon a little-known federal assistance program — Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, run by the Social Security Administration. ...

Williams, 63, thought her life insurance wouldn’t be used until after she died. She didn’t understand it had a cash value and that she could turn it in and collect $1,900. That was far less than the $10,000 in funeral expenses she bought the policy to cover when she died.

For Williams, the cash value of her policy along with the $260 she had saved in her checking account pushed her over SSI’s $2,000 limit on how much a recipient is allowed in savings and other assets. ...

That $2,000 asset limit hasn’t changed since 1989. If it had kept up over 51 years with inflation, it would be $10,000 today.

“I would have definitely went by the rules,” Williams says. “I didn’t know I was breaking them.”

The penalty was stiff: Williams was kicked off SSI, her primary source of income, and told by Social Security to pay back two years of benefits totaling $20,385. ...

“You’re telling me I owe you $20,000?” Williams remembers thinking in the Social Security office. “I can’t even pay my bills. … Where am I going to live?” ...

Ultimately, she sought out the help of Gregory Burrell, president and CEO of the Terry Funeral Home, an institution in West Philadelphia that has served Black families for generations.

Burrell let Williams turn the policy over to the funeral home.

“We see that all the time,” Burrell, a former president of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, the largest group of Black funeral directors, said of the confusion that caught Williams. “Unfortunately, people don’t know any better. And they’re stressing, and these insurance policies — they’re considered assets.” ...

 

800 Number Answering Time In FY 2024

 

From Social Security

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE) has posted its Spring 2024 Newsletter. NADE's members make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims.

About That Footnote

     Social Security is trying to worm its way out of the federal courts applying the new rule changing past relevant work from 15 years to 5 by saying in a footnote to a Social Security ruling that it expected the courts to apply the law in effect at the time of the administrative decision. 

    I wrote earlier that I didn't think that Social Security was getting out of this problem with a simple footnote.

    Here's a quote that may be of interest:

It is in the general true that the province of an appellate court is only to enquire whether a judgment when rendered was erroneous or not. But if subsequent to the judgment and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied. If the law be constitutional . . . I know of no court which can contest its obligation. It is true that in mere private cases between individuals, a court will and ought to struggle hard against a construction which will, by a retrospective operation, affect the rights of parties, but in great national concerns . . . the court must decide according to existing laws, and if it be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside.

    Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that in United States v. Schooner Peggy, 5 U.S. 1 (1801). You don't have to go back that far to find the same principle applied. Try Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U.S. 696 (1974). Want a case where this was applied to Social Security? See Hicks v. Califano, 600 F.2d 1048 (4th Cir. 1979). That one is especially applicable because it was a case arising from the initial adoption of the grid regulations.

    There won't be that many cases where the difference between 15 years and 5 years is outcome determinative,  I don't know why Social Security wants to fight over these few cases. Get it over with and accept the voluntary remands.

    For that matter, apply this at the Appeals Council. Don't apply res judicata to cases affected and grant reopenings within the two and four time periods allowed by law when requested.

Immigrants Help Social Security Trust Funds

     From The Hill writing about Tuesday's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee on future funding of Social Security benefits:

“The immigration surge, we project from 2021 to 2026, will result in about $1 trillion in additional revenue” over a ten year period, Dr. Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told lawmakers during a Tuesday hearing. ...

Republicans — including former president and presidential candidate Donald Trump — have increasingly pointed to immigration as a drain on social safety nets for the elderly in recent months, including Social Security and Medicare. 

Top budgetary experts bucked those claims during Tuesday’s panel as they argued immigrants could have a positive impact on Social Security.  ...

Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) pressed [Stephen] Goss [Social Security's Chief Actuary] on whether the SSA accounted for the “impact of illegal immigrants” in their yearly report.

“Absolutely, we always have,” Goss responded. “The bottom line really is that immigration of any form is actually a positive in the realm we are now where the birth rates in the country are as low as they are.” ...

    Isn't it obvious that illegal immigrants help the Social Security trust funds? They contribute but can't get anything in return. Of course, this won't be obvious if you believe that illegal immigrants are just "given" Social Security benefits as soon as they arrive but, of course, that's a myth believed only by the credulous.

Two Rulings On PRW

     Social Security will publish two Rulings in the Federal Register tomorrow on How We Apply Medical-Vocational Profiles and How We Evaluate Past Work.

    Here's a footnote from the first of those Rulings:

We will use this SSR beginning on its applicable date. We will apply this SSR to new applications filed on or after the applicable date of the SSR and to claims that are pending on and after the applicable date. This means that we will use this SSR on and after its applicable date in any case in which we make a determination or decision. We expect that Federal courts will review our final decisions using the rules that were in effect at the time we issued the decisions. If a court reverses our final decision and remands a case for further administrative proceedings after the applicable date of this SSR, we will apply this SSR to the entire period at issue in the decision we make after the court’s remand.

    We'll see how this plays out but I doubt they're getting out of this problem with a footnote.