What Is Going On At The SSAB?

Here is the agenda for a recent meeting of the Social Security Advisory Board:

Social Security Advisory Board

Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

9:45 a.m. - 11:30 p.m. (sic) The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities: What Went Wrong and a Strategy for Change

Richard V. Burkhauser
Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor
Cornell University

1:30 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Meeting with the National Association of Disability Examiners
Andrew Martinez, President (California)
Tom Ward, President-elect (Michigan)
Susan Smith, Immediate Past President (Ohio)
Jeff Price, Legislative Director; Past President
(North Carolina

2:14 - 3:45 p.m. Third Parties Providing Tailored Eligibility Services
Ulrich Brechbuhl, President and CEO
Suzy Perlman, SSA Liaison
Chamberlin Edmonds
Atlanta GA

Here is the abstract of one of Professor Burkhart's recent papers:

In the 1990s, the United States reformed welfare programs targeted on single mothers and dramatically reduced their benefit receipt while increasing their employment and economic wellbeing. Despite increasing calls to do the same for working age people with disabilities in the U.S., disability cash transfer program rolls continue to grow as their employment rates fall and their economic well-being stagnates. In contrast to the failure to reform United States disability policy, the Netherlands, once considered to have the most out of control disability program among OECD [Organizaton for Economic Cooperation and Development] nations, initiated reforms in 2002 that have dramatically reduced their disability cash transfer rolls, while maintaining a strong but less generous social minimum safety net for all those who do not work.

Here we review disability program growth in the United States and the Netherlands, link it to changes in their disability policies and show that while difficult to achieve, fundamental disability reform is possible. We argue that shifts in SSI policies that focus on better integrating working age men and women with disabilities into the work force along the lines of those implemented for single mothers in the 1990s, together with SSDI program changes that better integrate private and public disability insurance programs along the lines and economic well-being as well as reducing SSDI/SSI program growth.

All I can say is best wishes if the United States adopts a rehabilitation fantasy that ignores the facts that manufacturing jobs have declined dramatically and that the cognitive requirements of the remaining jobs have increased significantly. I really want to see a rehabilitation program that will return to work my client who is a 52 year old, 10th grade dropout who was working as a Certified Nurse Assistant at a nursing home until the facts that she is 5'2", weighs 245 pounds and has bad knees and a bad back caught up with her.

To an attorney the conflict of interest involved in representing Social Security claimants on disability claims while seeking enormous contracts from Social Security as Chamberlin Edmonds is doing is just mind-boggling. Did they really start out as a law firm? How do you go from being a law firm to whatever they are now?

Videoconferencing To Be Added To SSA Website?

 From the blog of the law firm of Fleschner, Stark, Tanoos & Newlin:

The Social Security Administration is considering adding videoconferencing to its website to assist seniors who have inquiries about their Social Security or Social Security Disability benefits, said an official at Tuesday’s meeting of the agency’s Future Systems Technology Advisory Panel. ...

Last week, the Social Security Administration even introduced an iPhone app called Baby Name Playroom that identifies the most popular baby names from years past.

Chief Information Officer Frank Baitman said that the agency is already creating another app, but that the next one will be more functional than fun–designed to help seniors with their disability benefits.

It's A Wonder Anybody Wants To Do Business With GSA

 From the Journal & Topics Newspapers in Chicago:

Building delays on a new Social Security Administration (SSA) office moving to Mt. Prospect are entering their 16th month. ...

"When we received the lease in January 2010, the initial desire was for them to move in by the first of 2011," said Nick Papanicholas, Jr., of Nicholas & Associates. "But the review process is taking longer on their end and they are going through numerous stages."

The General Services Administration (GSA) is the SSA's real estate manager. Papanicholas said there are numerous governmental departments that need to review building drawings before anything is constructed. He is hoping to begin construction this summer and said it would take three months to complete. ...

The new office is currently just a shell on the inside. Partitions still need to be built inside the office, as well as the ceiling, flooring and plumbing. ...

The new facility will total approximately 16,000 sq. ft. in a vacant strip mall at Kensington and Wheeling.

The lease will be for 15 years with an option to leave after 10 years at an annual rent of $483,870. Current rent at the Prospect Hts. facility is $526,243.

Commissioner Wants Child SSI Study

From the Boston Globe:

The commissioner of the Social Security Administration for the first time publicly acknowledged yesterday that there are major flaws with the $10 billion children’s disability program his agency oversees and said he was aggressively seeking congressional approval to conduct an independent scientific study of the program’s weaknesses.

In an extensive interview at the Globe, Michael Astrue said that such a study, which would cost about $10 million, could provide a dispassionate, scientific basis for changing aspects of the children’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which can be overhauled only by congressional decree.

The best organization to identify problems within the swiftly growing program, he said, is the Institute of Medicine, the nonprofit health research wing of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

“Too much of legislation happens by sound bite and anecdote,’’ Astrue said. “It’s one of the things I worry about in this area. When you see how shrill the advocates are, and then you see what we are getting from the other side of the fence, too, what kind of legislation is this going to look like if we’re not careful?’’ ...

The commissioner was careful not to say that parents were deliberately cheating the system. Rather, he said the law makes the SSI program, by statute, vulnerable to being manipulated by families, lawyers, and others with financial incentives to gain SSI benefits. ...

He said he has a strong suspicion that many children who are deemed troubled do not warrant a disability label, as given by the SSI program. In many instances, he said, the children do not qualify under stricter adult SSI standards once they turn 18.

“I think that’s a sign that there’s a certain percentage of them there that shouldn’t have been there in the first place,’’ he said.

Let me say that in the area where we practice, most attorneys avoid the SSI child's cases. My firm takes a few of them but many attorneys, perhaps most, avoid them altogether. We mostly avoid ADHD, seizures and asthma as the primary basis for a child's disability claim since these types of SSI child's cases are particularly problematic. My guess is that most Social Security attorneys across the country either do not take the SSI children's cases or take only a select few. In general, the SSI child's cases are just tough to win at the hearing level. Everybody who deals with them says the same thing -- often the mother has more serious problems than the child. It can be tough to separate how how much of the child's problems are due to the mother's own psychiatric problems and how much is innate to the child. This is not every case but  there are enough cases like this to be very noticeable. 

Still, there are cases that cry out for SSI child's benefits. I remember one  case I had where the child had severe hearing problems from birth. Tragically, even though the child had good parents, the problem was not recognized until too late. There is a time period in a child's life during which it must be able to hear spoken speech. If the child is not able to hear speech during this time period, the child will never be able to understand spoken speech or be able to speak effectively. Social Security denied the child since by the time the claim was filed the child had a hearing aid and could hear sound but the sound was meaningless to the child and would remain so. The child was approved by an Administrative Law Judge.

Not Your Usual CE

From WKRG in Mobile, AL:

Police in Summerdale say a man who sexually assaulted a woman while claiming to be an officer with the Social Security Administration has targeted at least three other women in Baldwin County.

Last week, Pamela Thrailkill told police a heavy-set man weighing 300 pounds, called her and said he was with the Social Security Administration. The man said he needed to come over and take "measurements" for Thrailkill's pending disability case. When he got to her mobile home, Thrailkill say the man fondled her breasts.

People Don't Think Social Security Has To Be Cut To Balance Budget

From an Associated Press poll of 1,001 people taken from May 5-11, 2011:

Do you think it is possible for the federal government to balance its budget without cutting spending on Social Security, or do you think spending on Social Security will have to be cut?

Possible to balance budget without cutting spending on Social Security   59%
Spending on Social Security will have to be cut                                         39%
Don’t know                                                                                                  2%

OIDAP Documents Released -- What's The Plan?

The Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP), Social Security's effort to develop an alternative to the antiquated Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), a key element in disability determination, has released some documents from its May 4, 2011 public meeting. 

Many of the speakers the Panel heard were from the Department of Labor, which had prepared the DOT and its successor, the O*NET, and from the Department of the Census, which has its own very limited occupational information system. Maybe these presentations helped the Panel. My possibly jaundiced view is that this was nothing more than window dressing to give an appearance that whatever the Panel produces reflects a scientific consensus.My view may also be influenced by the fact that many of the presentations were in Powerpoint. I agree with those who blame Powerpoint "for everything from corporate [and governmental] stupidification to burying Western civilization in a hailstorm of bullet points."

The more important presentations were from the Panel Chair, Mary Barros-Bailey, and Social Security's Director of Occupational Information System development, Sylvia Karman. What has been posted is not complete enough to give one a clear idea of the plans of Barros-Bailey and Karman but it is clear that Social Security is charging ahead with a major endeavor.

I wish I could get answers to two questions from Barros-Bailey and Karman:

• Let us suppose that you collect data on a job, such as office assistant, and this data shows that it to have been performed at the sedentary level at 20% of employers, at the light level at 70% of employers and at the medium level at 10% of employers. How would this job be categorized in the occupational information system you are developing -- as sedentary, as light or as medium -- or would it be categorized as all three -- or would it would be broken down into three new job titles of Office Assistant I, II and III? A similar question could also be asked about the length of time it takes to learn the job of office assistant or many other criteria.
• When will the decision be made on how to categorize jobs? Before or after the data is collected?

You might think that categorizing a job at all levels at which it is performed would be more accurate, and in a sense it is, but it also produces such muddy results that this approach has always been rejected in the past when occupational information systems were compiled. An occupational information system that does not try to categorize jobs by how they are typically performed could be used to justify denying virtually any disability claim. All you would have to do is to find a few people performing a job at the same limited level as the claimant and you have justification for denial. This is a big country. There are millions of employers. There are many ways that most job can be performed. Employers often regard employees as their friends. Employers make many concessions to the circumstances of individual valued employees, especially those they regard as their friends, concessions that are not available to the general public. Go down this route and vocational information becomes almost irrelevant since you would always be able to find work that a claimant could perform no matter what his or her limitations might be.

I think my concern with OIDAP's work is best summarized with a sports quote whose origins are probably apocryphal : "The problem with referees is that they just don't care which side wins." I would like OIDAP to be that referee who does not care which side wins but I am pretty sure that they do.

Disability Booming In Rhode Island

 From the Providence, RI Journal:

The number of Rhode Islanders collecting disability benefits from the Social Security Administration has grown by 38 percent in the last 10 years — six times the rate of increase for Social Security beneficiaries overall, a Providence Journal analysis of Social Security Administration figures shows. ...

Rhode Island’s experience reflects a broader trend.

At the end of 2001, Social Security paid disability benefits to about 6.9 million disabled workers and dependents of disabled workers. By the end of 2010, that number had ballooned to about 10.2 million, an increase of about 47 percent.

Largely because of the increases, Social Security’s disability insurance trust fund is running a deficit, and the fund itself is projected to reach exhaustion in seven years. ...

There are two main reasons for the jump in SSDI beneficiaries, said Social Security expert

For one thing, baby boomers are getting older, reaching the age at which people are more likely to suffer from disabilities, he said. “The body starts to break down,” he said. “So you’ve got a bigger chunk of people more likely to be disabled.”

Another factor is the economy. Because of high unemployment, more people are turning to Social Security disability as a source of income, said [Kurt] Czarnowski, a retired Social Security official who runs Czarnowski Consulting, a Social Security consulting firm in Norfolk, Mass. ...


“Most people would prefer to work because it pays them better than what they could collect in Social Security disability,” Czarnowski said. “But when jobs disappear, they need income, so they’re turning to any possible source of income that’s out there,” Czarnowski said. “Historically, when the economy has dipped, disability applications have increased,” he said. ...

Aging baby boomers and the economy are not the only factors contributing to the jump in the SSDI rolls. For example:
• Because of an increase in advertising by lawyers and others about SSDI benefits, some people who might not otherwise file for benefits wind up applying, said Steve Colella, a vocational rehabilitation counselor who serves as an expert witness in SSDI appeals cases. Such advertisements “reinforce [the notion of] disability; they don’t reinforce [the notion of] work,” Colella said.
• A set of congressional reforms in 1984 involving SSDI screening led to rapid growth in the share of recipients suffering from back pain and mental illness, according to a 2006 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Among the maladies that applicants cite nowadays in applying for benefits are anxiety, depression and back problems, Colella said.
• The standard definition of disability has not changed, Czarnowski said. But recent developments have had an impact on how the system works, such as new diagnostic tests and new diseases that have emerged, according to Social Security’s Office of the Inspector General.

Kurt Czarnowski was Regional Communications Director for Social Security, a position which would give him no hands on experience with disability determination at Social Security.

Social Security Bulletin Released

The May 2011 issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly journal, is out.

Government Waste -- New Call Center Delayed

From the Jackson, TN Sun:

The U.S. government has no intention of completing the Social Security call center in Jackson.

Government officials said Thursday that the project "is done" for at least the next decade because of the nation's current economic problems.

"Due to severe cuts by Congress in the agency's administrative budget, Social Security is no longer moving ahead with its plans to open a teleservice center in Jackson, TN," Mark Lassiter, of the Social Security Administration's National Press Office, wrote in an e-mail to The Jackson Sun. ..

The call center was expected to employ 150 to 200 people in federal jobs that paid annual salaries ranging from $27,990 to $55,844.

Reddy said the federal government will pay the building's owner, Gary Taylor, to complete construction of the building's shell. It will not pay for the installation of floors, ceilings, duct work, electrical or any interior infrastructure. The government currently is working with Taylor to discuss a buyout contract. Terms of the contract had not been established on Thursday, Reddy said. ...

The Social Security Administration broke ground on the call center in October. The agency had a 20-year, $64 million lease

This call center is in the Congressional District that was represented by John Tanner before his retirement. Tanner was chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee at the time the call center was being planned.