COLA Coming -- But Will Medicare Premium Increase Gobble It Up?

 From the Baltimore Sun:

After two years without seeing an increase in their Social Security checks, more than 59 million retirees and other beneficiaries can expect a bump up in benefits next year.

The Social Security trustees' annual report released this month estimates that the cost-of-living adjustment in next year's checks will be 0.7 percent. The increase, which will be announced in October, could be higher, depending on where prices head in the coming months.

Still, experts say, retirees could see all or some of that raise eaten up by higher Medicare premiums.

What's Going On In West Virginia?

If you wondered where the recent Wall Street Journal articles came from, well, here is your answer. Is this person on to a huge scandal or just someone with a huge axe to grind? Why were the local papers not interested in this story? Why was Social Security's Office of Inspector General apparently not interested in this story until part of it appeared in the Wall Street Journal? Why was only the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal interested in the story? Why, for that matter, is the Wall Street Journal staying away from some of the elements of this alleged scandal?

New Plan

From the Borowitz Report:

Presenting what he called a revolutionary plan to slash the nation’s mountain of debt, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) today proposed eliminating the Social Security program in its entirety and replacing it with Groupons.

“Instead of waiting each month for a check from Social Security, America’s elderly will receive valuable Groupons for everything they need, from Ramen noodles to cat food to caskets,” Mr. Ryan said in an appearance on Fox News.

Adding that Groupons would also help provide for elders’ medical needs, the congressman illustrated his point by holding up a Groupon offering 30 percent off on open-heart surgery in Cincinnati.

Moving on from Social Security, Mr. Ryan also proposed replacing Medicare with a new program in which seniors are shot at by Predator drones.

Was It A Bad Thing That The Muskogee Man Was Trying To Work?

From The Oklahoman newspaper:

Sen. Tom Coburn wants a meeting with the top Social Security Administration investigator to discuss the increase in people receiving disability payments, saying he's concerned that some may be using the program as “an extension of unemployment benefits.” ...

Coburn, R-Muskogee, said in an interview the fund may go broke before that because “growth in this program has been horrendous.” ...

Coburn said he has some personal experience: A man he hired in Muskogee to do some yard work told him that he was collecting Social Security disability payments. Coburn said Social Security workers from around the country have contacted him to tell of abuses in the program. ...

Coburn and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sent a letter to the inspector general of the Social Security Administration saying they were concerned that some judges were approving appeals at unrealistic rates.

“Given the looming collapse of (the Social Security Disability Income program), it is imperative that disability claims are properly examined to ensure that only those who are lawfully entitled to benefits receive them,” the senators wrote.

“Individuals cannot be allowed to exploit SSDI, transforming it into a supplemental source of unemployment income with enormous and crippling costs to taxpayers.”

The senators' request followed a story in The Wall Street Journal about a judge in West Virginia who approves nearly every one of the appeals he hears from people who were first denied disability benefits.

Memorial Day

I Don't Understand

Can anyone explain to me what this is?

"Sheer Panic"

Social Security's reaction to its budget situation? "Sheer panic", according to Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue.

What An Idea!

Jagadeesh Gokhale of the right wing Cato Institute makes what is, for him, a very reasonable plea -- "simply wipe out the [Social Security] Trust Funds entirely." Who could object to that?

Remember Russell Rowell?

You have to contrast the speed with which Social Security took action against Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Daugherty to their foot-dragging in the case of ALJ Russell Rowell. Daugherty may have exercised his discretion as an Administrative Law Judge in a questionable way but at least he did not combine that with abusing and humiliating vulnerable American citizens

Action Taken Against West Virginia ALJ

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Social Security Administration placed on leave an administrative law judge who has approved an unusually high number of applications for disability benefits, one week after a page one article in The Wall Street Journal detailed his decisions.

David B. Daugherty, based in Huntington, W. Va., awarded benefits in each of the 729 disability cases he decided in the first six months of fiscal 2011, according to government data. In fiscal 2010, Mr. Daugherty denied benefits in just four of the 1,284 cases he decided.

On May 19, the day the Journal story ran, a team from the agency's inspector general's office seized computers and interviewed employees from the West Virginia office....

Mr. Daugherty, who joined the agency as a judge in 1990, was escorted out of his office Thursday.

I regard the Wall Street Journal's articles on Judge Daugherty to be a hatchet job, unworthy of what was once a great newspaper. Certainly, there is reason to question how Judge Daugherty exercised his discretion but the Journal's articles strongly suggest corruption without producing the slightest proof of it. Implying collusion between Judge Daugherty and a local attorney without presenting proof is out of bounds in my book. All that was presented was proof that one local attorney's clients benefited greatly from Judge Daugherty's largess but the only apparent reason for that was that the attorney in question had more clients with cases before that hearing office than any other attorney. Undoubtedly, that attorney also had more hearings before each of the other judges in that office and received more decisions, both favorable and unfavorable, from that office than any other local attorney. Where is the corruption? Has the Wall Street Journal become nothing more than Fox News in print?