Astrue Speaks At NADR Conference

Commissioner Astrue spoke at the convention of the National Association of Disability Representatives (NADR) yesterday. I am told that he announced:

• The fees paid to Vocational Experts for testifying at Social Security hearings will rise by 10%.
  
• Fees paid to Medical Expert witnesses for their testimony are under review.
• The current process by which those who represent Social Security claimants notify the agency of their identifying information using form 1695 will be phased out. Apparently, Astrue did not discuss what will replace it.
• Astrue expects that sometime next year Social Security will adopt regulations which will recognize entities as representatives of claimants.
• New hearing offices will open this year. A new office for Fayetteville, NC is to be in the second round of office openings, but is still likely to open this year.
  

OIG Criticism For Barnhart

From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General(emphasis added):

SSA contracted with Abt to develop the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) project to test alternate methods of treating work activity in the Title II disability program. The contract states that after the design is completed, subsequent phases of this demonstration are to be awarded to the same contractor on a sole-source basis for the project's implementation, data collection, and evaluation and management. This award will be contingent upon successful performance of the design phase. A $2.4 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract was awarded to Abt with a period of performance from September 2004 to September 2006. Because of contract modifications and additional task orders, the contract was extended to September 2008 at a total cost of approximately $10.6 million. ...

We found that Abt generally adhered to the terms of the contract and delivered the services and final design options that SSA asked for under the contract. However, we have several concerns about the delays and costs associated with the design phase. While SSA is required by law to continue with the demonstration project, we are concerned that the multiple modifications extended the contract period from 2 to 4 years, and the design phase costs increased to $10.6 million, or $8.2 million more than initially expected. We believe approximately $5.3 million, or half of the total costs, could have been put to better use had the contract been better focused and completed within the initial timeframe. ...

Prior SSA management [when Jo Anne Barnhart was Commissioner of Social Security] demonstrated inadequate oversight of the contract's planning, scope and expenditures. ... For instance, while the Office of Management and Budget requires enhanced controls over cost-reimbursement contracts, in our review of invoices, we were unable to determine whether the contractor over- or under-billed for a specific task due. Furthermore, the contract was not monitored in a way that allowed for quickly detecting or avoiding cost overruns for tasks. Moreover, we found that SSA did not perform timely interim contractor performance evaluations, as required by the contract and recommended by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

This is the sort of report that the current Inspector General just did not do while George W. Bush was President. He seemed to regard criticism of contractors or high Social Security officials as out of bounds. Now he is only criticizing what happened when Social Security had a different Commissioner. When George W. Bush was President, the Inspector General reports seemed to focus on overpayments to claimants with the strong implication that any overpayment was the result of fraud. Overpayments are a valid area of inquiry for the Inspector General, but in an agency the size of Social Security there are bound to be blunders made in contracting and those blunders are also a valid area of inquiry. When it comes to overpayments, few of them are due to out and out fraud. Much of the time Social Security itself is at least partly to blame for the overpayment.

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

Some unions have called for Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue to resign. Would you be pleased if Astrue were to resign?

Yes (92)	47%
No (102)	53%

Total Votes: 194

Congressional Hearing Set For March 24

From the House Ways and Means Committee:

Congressman John S. Tanner (D-TN), Chairman, Subcommittee on Social Security, and Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, today announced a joint hearing on the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) large backlog in disability claims and other service delivery declines, including backlogs in program integrity activities. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in the main Committee hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m. ...

In recent years, SSA’s backlog of claims for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits has reached unprecedented levels, with more than 1.3 million Americans currently awaiting a decision on their case. The problem is particularly severe at the hearings level, where the backlog has more than doubled since 2000 – from about 310,000 to more than 765,000 – and the average waiting time is now almost 500 days.

These backlogs have resulted from years of underfunding as SSA’s workload increased due to the aging of the population and additional responsibilities given to the agency. Resource shortages have also led to service delivery declines in other areas. SSA has significantly cut back on program integrity activities such as continuing disability reviews and SSI redeterminations, even though these activities have been demonstrated to generate considerable savings, as much as $10 in program costs for every $1 in administrative expenditures. In addition, service to the public has declined in SSA’s field offices, as noted in a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the backlog problem is of such severity that GAO included it in its biennial “high risk” list of federal programs.

In the past two years, Congress has provided additional funding to begin to address these problems, and SSA has begun to implement a plan to eliminate the hearings level backlog by 2013. However, the agency continues to face new challenges. Disability and retirement claims are increasing due to the economic downturn in combination with demographic changes. From FY 2008 to FY 2009, initial disability claims are projected to increase by more than 12 percent and retirement claims by more than 8 percent, and both are expected to increase even further in FY 2010 and FY 2011.

Finally, two provisions designed to increase access to professional representation for disability claimants are scheduled to expire during the 111^th Congress; and legislative proposals have been offered relating to the disability determination process, such as changing how claimants give consent to release medical records.

Union Attacks Career Intern Program At Social Security

I have posted about the fact that many, perhaps most, job openings at Social Security are not being posted on USA Jobs. Here is some background from Alyssa Rosenberg at Government Executive on a major reason why that is:

The National Treasury Employees Union is continuing its long-standing battle against the Federal Career Intern Program by supporting a veteran who claims the program cost him a job with the Social Security Administration.

The union has filed an amicus brief in the Merit Systems Protection Board case Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration, arguing once again that FCIP illegally undermined veterans preference laws. The union claimed SSA improperly denied Weed, a disabled veteran, a chance to apply for claims and service representative positions by turning to FCIP during a second round of hiring.

"The FCIP was designed as a special-focus hiring authority to provide structured, two-year developmental internships," NTEU President Colleen Kelley stated. "Instead, we now find agencies using it as the principal, and in some cases only, means of hiring." ...

At issue in Alvern C. Weed v. Social Security Administration was SSA's failure to post a vacancy announcement during its second round of hiring. Weed had applied for the job during the first round by responding to an advertisement on the federal recruiting site USAJobs.gov, and was added to a list of candidates who had preference because of their veteran status. But the supervisor in charge of filling the position ignored that list and instead selected two candidates who responded to a newspaper advertisement.

Can someone explain to me why Social Security wants to avoid making job openings as widely known as possible? I may be naive but spreading the net as wide as possible sounds like a good idea to me. It also seems like the right thing to do even if there might be some inconveniences to it.

At least the federal Office of Personnel Management has decided to protect vets with service connected disabilities.

Update: The Senior Deputy General Counsel of the National Treasury Employees Union has just been hired as the General Counsel of the Office of Personnel Management. That might lead to a change in OPM's position on the litigation.

Congressional Hearing Next Week

The Orange County Leader reports that Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX) recently met with Social Security's Inspector General in advance of a Congressional hearing next week. The article says that the hearing concerns fraud in the Social Security disability programs. Brady is a member of the Social Security Subcommittee. The Subcommittee website does not yet list the date or time of that hearing.

It might be noted that the Subcommittee Chair is John Tanner of Tennessee, a prominent Blue Dog Democrat. However, even though I regard Social Security's backlogs as the biggest problem, the agency's lack of adequate staffing also leads to overpayments and these overpayments are not a minor matter. I wish that the term "fraud" would not be tossed about lightly. Certainly, there is some fraud at Social Security, but most overpayments are not the result of fraud. Many are the result of mistakes made by the Social Security Administration itself.

No Negative COLA

From the Wall Street Journal:

This year, we are likely to experience very low inflation or deflation, which got me wondering how Social Security benefits are adjusted in such an environment. ...

If there is deflation, Social Security benefits won't be cut, Mr. [Mark]Lassiter [a spokesperson for Social Security] says.

I am glad to see some definite word on this. I was not expecting a negative adjustment, but the statute is not crystal clear on the point.

Waiting In Kansas

From the Lawrence Journal World & News:

On the last day of 2008, Debra Shirar opened the mailbox and found a letter she had been waiting more than two years to receive.

It was the notice setting the date for her disability hearing. Almost 900 days after she filed a claim for Social Security Disability Insurance, she would finally get her day in court. She cried the whole way back from the mailbox. ...

More than 11,000 people are waiting for a disability hearing in front of a judge in either Kansas City or Wichita. In 2008, the average time it took to hear an appeal in Kansas City was 719 days, which is just under the two-year mark. In Wichita, it was 516 days. ...

At Lawrence’s Independence Inc. office, which helps hundreds of people navigate the disability system each year, the wait times have gone down, benefit advocate Rob Tabor said.

More cases are being sent back to the state for special review, which results in faster decisions and frees up hearing spots. However, hardship remains. ...

In August 2007, Kansas was ranked as the worst state in the country for the time it took to process disability claims. Since then, improvements have been made, both in the region and nationally.

SSA has decided to open a hearings office in Topeka, which will take about two years. That office will have five judges and support staff.

E-File Weirdness On Escalated Claims

Let me pass along a bizarre little detail about the current state of Social Security's electronic files. After a request for hearing is filed on a Social Security disability claim, changed circumstances in a claimant's life sometimes make it appropriate for the claimant to file an additional claim with Social Security for a different type of disability benefit. When this happens, the new claim is typically "escalated" to the hearing level and disposed of at the same time as the claim upon which the request for hearing was originally filed. I now know that an escalated new claim for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) changes what had been an electronic file to a paper file. Why? Apparently, some glitch in the software. This may happen with other escalated claims, such as cases where a claimant asks for a hearing on a Disability Insurance Benefits claim and then loses her husband, causing her to file an additional claim for Disabled Widows benefits, but I do not know for sure. Maybe someone more familiar with this problem can tell us.

I hear that Social Security is working on the problem.

Misleading Emergency Message

Social Security was supposed to begin issuing 1099s this year to attorneys and others who received direct payment of fees for representing Social Security claimants. However, Social Security sent out a "sensitive" Emergency Message to its staff in February saying that because of "unexpected systems limitations" an "executive decision" had been made to delay issuing the 1099s for one year. The Emergency Message was labeled "not to be shared with the public."

I have heard from enough attorneys that I can say that the Emergency Message was inaccurate and misleading. Social Security did send out a large number of 1099s to attorneys this year, but not all of those who should have received a 1099 got one. I did not get one myself, but many of my colleagues in North Carolina did. The 1099s that were sent out were uniformly erroneous, with the dollar figure for fees received being substantially lower than it should have been.

Do I see some red faces at Social Security? Having a little trouble admitting even to staff how badly this was fouled up? Why can't you just put out an accurate press release on this and be done with it? It's not like we were really eager to get those 1099s anyway! At least Social Security did not put down too much income on the 1099s!