Syracuse TV Station On Backlogs

From WSYR in Syracuse, NY:

If you get so sick or injured that you can’t work anymore, Social Security disability kicks in. But it may take a few months for benefits to go into effect.

Currently, it takes nearly three months just to process disability applications. If they go to hearing, it could take up to a year and a half.

The report deals with the issues associated with the five month waiting period for Disability Insurance Benefits, using the example of a man with pancreatic cancer who may not live that long.

I Hope This Doesn't Involve Many Employees

A notice posted by the Social Security Administration seeking a contractor to do medical testing of employees for asbestos contamination:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a known requirement for a contractor to provide complete occupational medical testing services for SSA employees exposed to asbestos concentrations. The contractor shall arrange to provide examinations from a self-contained MOBILE UNIT ON-SITE at the SSA facility located at 6401 Security Boulevard, Woodlawn, MD 21235 when at least 10 employees are to be examined. If fewer than 10 employees are to be examined the employee(s) may visit the contractor’s site upon a one-week notification from SSA.

Is HALLEX Defunct?

Social Security has a manual for its Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR), called HALLEX. Almost two years ago, ODAR basically stopped updating HALLEX, at least so far as one can tell by looking at it online. Clearly, HALLEX is out of date now -- if the publicly available version of HALLEX can be trusted.

What is the explanation? Is HALLEX defunct? Is it still valid, but just not up to date because of lack of manpower at ODAR? Has it been updated, but ODAR is just keeping the updates confidential? Most of Social Security's Emergency Messages are being kept from the public. The only reason that I can imagine for trying to keep them secret is a general increase in pointless federal government secrecy during the Bush Administration. I hope that the answer is not "Well, the updates are really boring and we thought you wouldn't be interested, so we just didn't bother to post them online." You might be amazed at how interested I and other attorneys can be in these boring things, especially when it looks like someone is trying to keep them secret.

Master And Sub Accounts -- And Allsup

From today's Federal Register:

We are issuing this notice to obtain public input regarding an anticipated change to an Agency payment procedure that permits benefit payments to be deposited into a third-party's ``master'' account when the third party maintains separate ``sub'' accounts for individual beneficiaries. We anticipate changing our current procedure in light of concerns about how high-interest lenders are using this master/sub account procedure. We are also seeking comments on the practice that some beneficiaries follow of preauthorizing their banks to transfer their benefits to lenders immediately after the benefits are deposited into their accounts.

I think this has also been used by Long Term Disability (LTD) insurers to collect their offset against Social Security disability benefits. Allsup, which represents many LTD recipients before Social Security at the behest of their LTD insurers, advertises its "Overpayment Recovery Service", through which Allsup "Withdraw[s] overpayment funds directly from claimant’s bank account using our patented electronic process."

This my explain why attorneys who represent Social Security claimants, such as myself, exhibit some disdain for Allsup.

Witness List For Ways And Means Committee Hearing

The House Ways and Means Committee has released the following tentative witness list for its full committee hearing on Wednesday on Social Security's backlogs:

Panel:
	Tentative The Honorable Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner, Social Security Administration
	Panel:
	Sylvester J. Schieber, Chairman, Social Security Advisory Board
	Marty Ford, Co-Chair, Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security Task Force
	Witold Skwierczynski, President of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council of Social Security Field Operations Locals, Baltimore, Maryland
	Mara Mayor, Member, AARP Board of Directors, Bethesda, Maryland
	The Honorable Frederick Waitsman, Administrative Law Judge, Social Security Administration, and Vice Chair, Social Security Section of the Federal Bar Association, Atlanta, Georgia

The hearing is at 10:00 and should be available in streaming video. I would guess that there is a good chance that C-SPAN will be broadcasting the hearing, but we will have to wait to see on that one. I have to keep emphasizing that this is a full committee hearing, which makes it a much bigger deal than a Social Security Subcommittee hearing, not that a Subcommittee hearing is unimportant.

Commendation For Field Office Operations Supervisor

From the Tacoma News Tribune:

Lisa Black of Bonney Lake said she learned all she needed to know about handling handcuffs from watching “COPS” on TV.

That knowledge came in handy last month at the South Seattle Social Security Administration office where she works. A knife-wielding man tried to enter the office minutes before it opened and stabbed the office guard.

Black’s actions earned her a commendation this month from Bonney Lake Mayor Neil Johnson for her “bravery and humanitarian spirit in the face of life-threatening danger.” The certificate was presented at a City Council meeting.

Black, 45, is the operations supervisor for the office and a 13-year SSA employee. She said the real heroes were office guard John Robinson, 45, of Tacoma and a parking attendant from the building.

The morning of March 19, Black said, the sound of the office alarm going off sent her running toward the front door shortly before 9 a.m. There she found Robinson lying on top of two other men.

Blood covered his face and head where he had been stabbed. He couldn’t see because of the blood in his eyes.

Beneath Robinson was the parking attendant who just happened to be passing by when the fight erupted in the small hallway leading to the door. The attendant saw the man with the knife fighting with the guard. He and Robinson brought the assailant to the floor.

“I was kind of holding John’s hand, and the guy started struggling,” Black said. “He said, ‘Get off me!’ He started moving around.

He was a big guy, at least 250 pounds and over 6 feet tall, she said.<

The parking attendant told her he may not be able to hold the assailant’s wrists much longer.

Black reacted. She knew Robinson had handcuffs on a clip on his utility belt, so she grabbed them.

“I had watched ‘COPS’,” she said. “I knew how to open them.

“I just acted. I didn’t have a thought pattern. I knew I had to do everything necessary so he wouldn’t get up,” she said.

Black had to pull his one hand closer and finally secured the handcuffs on him. The man gave up struggling and the police arrived.

Black, who is the mother of two daughters, ages 15 and 26, said the blood on her clothes and hands was easily washed away. Robinson, on the other hand, was hurt and is still home recuperating. He is employed by Federal Protective Services, a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Asked why she jumped into the fray instead of standing back like others in the hallway, Black said: “This is my office. He (Robinson) is my friend. I couldn’t just watch.”

Upset and loud people are a part of her federal office, she said, but one attack like that in a career is enough.

“I’m hoping I never have to do that again.”

New Cancer Listings Coming

All federal agencies much clear new Notices of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRMs) with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House before publishing them in the Federal Register for public comment. OMB has just cleared the following item, which should appear in the Federal Register shortly:

AGENCY: SSA	RIN: 0960-AG57
TITLE: Revised Medical Criteria for Malignant Neoplastic Diseases (3429P)
STAGE: Proposed Rule	ECONOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT: No
RECEIVED DATE: 02/01/2008	LEGAL DEADLINE: None
** COMPLETED: 04/18/2008	COMPLETED ACTION: Consistent without Change

Oh, yes. Malignant neoplastic diseases means cancer.

ODAR Overstaffed? Work Left Undone? SSA Employees Ovepaid?

From the minutes of the March 4, 2008 meeting of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, an organization of Social Security management personnel, but which has few members from Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) I would guess (emphasis added):

Welcome and Report on Meeting with Commissioner Astrue (Greg Heineman and Bethany Paradis):

Bethany and Greg met with Commissioner Astrue on March 3rd. The Commissioner expressed his appreciation of the excellent job NCSSMA has done both in terms of making sure Congress is aware of the effects of the SSA budget on our ability to serve the public and in communicating to CO [Central Office] the unfiltered voice of field and TSC [Teleservice Center] management . The March 3rd meeting included a host of individuals including Linda McMahon, Lisa DeSoto, David Foster, Dr. Wells and others. The Commissioner covered various topics while Linda provided support and David Foster asked clarifying questions. The Commissioner was receptive to what Greg and Bethany had to say on the five discussion topics.

As far as actual input of the discussion, the first question dealt with distribution of staff. Because of major interest in Washington on ODAR backlogs, ODAR will actually hire approximately 175 new ALJs, up from the 150 initially recommended. The total optimum number of ALJs is 1250, but ODAR should have about 1175 ALJs by the end of the year. It appears that ODAR is in adequate shape in terms of support staff. Support is currently at about 4.4 employees for every ALJ. The union is advocating for more, but ultimately the result may be 4 employees for every ALJ. Almost half of the support staff needed to pull paper files and organize the material will have less and less paper to handle as the transition is made to electronic files. This will allow for different distribution of support staff among ALJs. ...

In addition, there are high volumes of work that we can’t do because priorities are on clearing integrity workloads. Last year we had 3300 work years of additional workloads; this year 4800 work years of additional workloads. The truth is, we will not be able to do all of this work with current resource levels. We only have enough funding to complete what have been identified as integrity workloads: redeterminations, limited issue cases, medical CDRs, etc. Some errors will never be corrected because of the inability to address approximately 8100 work years of additional workloads. ...

The last staffing replacement rate was1 hire for every 2 losses. This year, all operations components may get 7 hires for every 10 losses. Other components may still only receive 1 hire for every 2 losses. ...

Basically, over the past years, the agency has experienced a net loss of 2 offices per year. The agency will continue to conduct service delivery assessments to look at offices when leases expire. There is no list of offices on the chopping block, but individual office assessments will need to be performed to determine which closures, consolidates, etc. need to be considered. Office closures are very political, which does affect the final outcome. ...

Recently, a new OPM [Office of Personnel Management] guide was published that provides for a significantly lower grade structure for many SSA positions. John Nolan from the Chicago Region is the lead for reviewing the new OPM supervisory guide. All executives have acknowledged the new plan is a problem, although OPM seemed surprised by that concern. A revised draft should be coming out the week of March 10th. NCSSMA past presidents have been tasked with reviewing this. We did not receive a formal response to the five questions raised in our meeting with the Commissioner. We will need to write a formal response and send it to the Commissioner for review.

Iowa Office To Close

From the Quad-City Times:

The Social Security Administration will close its Clinton office effective June 1 and merge it with the Davenport office.

The move should make the local administration of the agencies services more efficient, an agency spokesman said Friday. However, it will be more inconvenient for some residents to travel to Davenport for personal service they currently get in Clinton.

Buffalo News Editorial

From the Buffalo News:

If you paid insurance premiums that ran a little more than 6 percent of your income every week throughout your working life, but had to wait nearly two years to collect when you had a legitimate claim, you might complain to the government.

But when it is the government that is making people wait to collect the disability benefits to which they are entitled — because they paid for them — even members of Congress are left to rage into the storm.

Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, is among the congressmen heard to demand that the Social Security Administration finally make some serious efforts to chip away at the disgraceful backlog of cases of people who can no longer hold down a job and need the benefits to survive. ...

The need ... was disgracefully not addressed when the government hired 135 administrative law judges to hear those appeals but assigned only 10 to the state of New York — and none to Buffalo. ...

Attorneys who handle such cases have long lists of people who went bankrupt, were evicted, even died, while waiting for their appeals to be reviewed.

At least one claimant never got the message that he’d finally won his appeal because he was, at that moment, out in the woods killing himself.