It's The Aging Of The Baby Boom Generation

From the Washington Post:

The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation's economic problems, heightening concern that the jobless are expanding the program beyond its intended purpose of aiding the disabled.

Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, to 2.8 million, between 2008 and 2009, as the economy was seriously faltering.

The growth is the sharpest in the 54-year history of the program. It threatens the program's fiscal stability and adds to an administrative backlog that is slowing the flow of benefits to those who need them most....

Economists say the program has grown because eligibility rules were loosened in the 1980s.

Poll

See below for excerpts from the Re-Imagining Social Security report.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

Dessert Is Ibuprofen

From today's New York Times:

At the Cooper Tire plant in Findlay, Ohio, Jack Hartley, who is 58, works a 12-hour shift assembling tires: pulling piles of rubber and lining over a drum, cutting the material with a hot knife, lifting the half-finished tire, which weighs 10 to 20 pounds, and throwing it onto a rack.

Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.”

He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that’s it.”

After years of debate about how to keep Social Security solvent, the White House has created an 18-member panel to consider changes, including raising the retirement age. Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the House minority leader, has called for raising the age as high as 70 in the next 20 years, and many Democrats have endorsed similar steps, against opposition from some liberal groups. The panel will report by Dec. 1, after the midterm elections. ...

A new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job like Mr. Hartley’s — including hammering nails, bending under sinks, lifting baggage — that can be radically different at age 69 than at age 62. Still others work under difficult conditions, like exposure to heat or cold, exposure to contaminants or weather, cramped workplaces or standing for long stretches.

In all, the researchers found that 45 percent of older workers, or 8.5 million, held such difficult jobs. For janitors, nurses’ aides, plumbers, cashiers, waiters, cooks, carpenters, maintenance workers and others, raising the retirement age may mean squeezing more out of a declining body.

I have clients who perform that tire building job -- except they are making truck tires. Can you imagine how heavy that work is? I am told that it is rare for an employees to make it to 65 at that plant.

What Do You Think?

Recommendations from the report of the Re-Imagining Social Security Subcommittee of Social Security's Future Systems Technology Advisory Panel:

Move to an electronic customer self-service model with the goal of moving transactions to the Internet each year until 90% of the business with SSA takes place online.

• Provide other channels for:

~Complex transactions that are not suited to online execution
~Those who cannot or will not use technology

• Develop a series of incentives to encourage and direct the public to utilize the electronic self-service model. ...
• Implement a program to automate the initial disability claim decision that would only require human review for denied claims. ...
• Lead a government-wide study group to discuss options with other agencies to pilot a single government service center in each region for individuals who need face-to-face service across from different agencies. (For example, IRS, SSA, INS, State Social Services, etc.)

~Consider contracting-out providing the services by third parties vs. each agency.
~Look at the model in some state DMVs. ...

~Consider outsourcing some activities to third parties, e.g. libraries.

[Scenarios demonstrating the Subcommittee's vision for the future]

Disability determination

• SSA examiner uses [information provided by claimant] along with database of prior determinations
• Decision support tools provide recommendation

~Statistical analysis and AI [Artificial Intelligence] programs gather information on similar cases and their outcomes and report to examiner

~90% of cases are determined automatically

• Positive decisions are not reviewed

• SSA staff reviews rejected claims

In case of an appeal

• The first hearing is with an AU[?], the claimant and an attorney using Google Wave

• Face-to-face hearings occur depending on the case backlog and the outcome of the Wave conference

• A scheduling system assigns cases in backlogged areas to areas that are more lightly loaded for video hearings

• Decision support for the administrative law judge

~Statistical and Al programs search the database of appeals to report on similar cases and their outcomes

Updated Fee Payment Numbers

Social Security's numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and certain others for representing Social Security claimants:

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-10	32,227	$111,440,046.23
Feb-10	29,914	$105,708,101.59
Mar-10	34,983	$122,874,426.87
Apr-10	44,740	$153,478,589.32
May-10	34,686	$119,527,194.40
June-10	32,432	$111,887,579.72
July-10	32,232	$132,328,622.27
Aug-10	34,755	$119,424,346.42

Missing 230,000 Centenarians

I had posted earlier about concerns in Japan that their Social Security system was paying retirement benefits to some supposed centenarians who had actually died years earlier. Now comes a report that there may be 230,000 such people! The Japanese Social Security records were so bad that they had 77,000 people over 120 years old listed as still alive and 884 who were supposedly over 150 years old!

Data Center Delays

From NextGov:

A stimulus project to replace an aging Social Security Administration data center is more than six months behind schedule due to a disagreement over where to locate the upgraded computer facility. ...

The government planned to purchase land for the facility in March, according to the initial project plans. But SSA and GSA officials postponed the site selection, amid questions from House Ways and Means Committee members and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, about the cost efficiency of using stimulus money for new property rather than taking advantage of available space on SSA's campus in Woodlawn, Md. ...

SSA pushed back site selection to September so GSA could thoroughly study the Woodlawn vicinity as a possible location, according to a revised Recovery Act plan Social Security issued in June. GSA now anticipates buying the property in December, according to the document. Substantial construction should be complete by October 2013.

The updated plan states that, after a formal review, SSA and staff from the House Ways and Means Committee, which had requested the cost-benefit analysis, agreed GSA should continue searching for a site off-campus.

But on Wednesday, an aide for Grassley, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, said the senator still is concerned about the government spending money to buy land, when property on Social Security's campus could be reconfigured to function as a new data center instead.

Correction: Astrue Has Been To Obama White House

I blundered in saying that Commissioner Astrue had not been to the White House during the Obama Administration. He has been there several times. Thanks to Social Security's Press Office for setting me straight. I would plead that the White House visitor database is far from user friendly but I should have double-checked something that seemed so surprising to me. I expected that the Commissioner of Social Security would be invited to certain receptions and to have at least occasional meetings with the Office of Management and Budget and perhaps to go to other meetings concerned with the implementation of new policies and legislation. It turns out that my expectations were correct while my ability to understand the White House visitor log database was faulty.

I wish I could have corrected this earlier in the day but this is a blog. I am a practicing attorney. My client's hearings must come first.

No White House Visits For Astrue In This Administration

The Obama White House has released the White House visitor records for this administration. The name of Michael Astrue, the Commissioner of Social Security, does not appear on the list. About 450,000 other names do.

Social Security Employees Rate Their Agency Highly As Place To Work

A press release from Social Security:

Social Security employees rate their agency as one of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government according to The Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation. Among the large federal agencies in the top ten Best Places to Work, Social Security also had the greatest improvement in overall employee satisfaction.

“I am always impressed by the outstanding work of our employees and by their commitment to public service,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. “Our workloads have grown tremendously due to the recession and we are under more pressure than ever to keep up with the increased demand for our services. Despite these pressures, every day our employees bring the energy and teamwork necessary to provide the public with the highest standard of considerate service.”

The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings draw on responses from more than 263,000 federal employees to produce detailed rankings of employee satisfaction across 290 federal agencies and subcomponents. Data from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is used to rank agencies according to a Best Places to Work index score, which measures overall employee satisfaction. In addition to the employee satisfaction rating, agencies are scored in workplace categories such as effective leadership, employee skills/mission match, pay and work/life balance. Social Security employees gave the agency higher ratings in all of these categories when compared to the prior survey.

“Our employees make a positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans,” Commissioner Astrue said. “I encourage anyone looking for a career in public service to look closely at Social Security. You can make a difference in people's lives and your own.”