Getting The Word Out

     From the Reuters Money blog:

“Starving the beast” is a favorite conservative strategy for forcing cuts in federal spending. The idea is to deprive the government of revenue in order to force spending cuts ...

The SSA [Social Security Administration] is funded through the same Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax that pays benefits, so it doesn’t compete for general revenue to meet its costs. But Congressional appropriators — who oversee its budget — have been squeezing the agency anyway.

In fiscal 2011, Congress provided the SSA with about $1 billion less than requested by President Obama. Those cuts forced the agency to make cuts that beneficiaries have noticed. It suspended mailing of the annual statement of benefits, and it shelved plans to open eight new hearing offices to handle the backlog of disability claims, which has soared during the recession.

SSA had planned to restore the statement mailings in fiscal 2012 to people over age 60 not yet receiving benefits  – but that won’t happen “if Congress doesn’t provide adequate support,” says SSA spokesman Mark Hinkle....

Hinkle says the SSA also has responded to the tight budget by reducing employee overtime by 80 percent. That has cut into the amount of time available to help people who come into SSA local field offices for face-to-face services. The agency also lost about 1,600 workers last year who can’t be replaced due to a hiring freeze.

     In addition to learning about the 80% cut in overtime, I take away from this the fact that a Social Security spokesperson is out there alerting the media about Social Security's appropriations problem, something that Social Security has traditionally not done. In fact, my impression has been that over the decades that Social Security has always downplayed its funding problems -- to the agency's detriment. I would be interested to know who made the first contact in this case, Hinkle or the reporter.

Quiz Answer

Question: Retroactive Social Security or SSI benefits are not treated as a resource for purposes of computing SSI benefits for what length of time after receipt?

Possible answers:

• Three months
• Six months
• Nine months
• One year
• Until spent

Correct answer: Nine months

3.5% COLA

CBS Money Watch is reporting that the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to be announced tomorrow will be 3.5%. However, many Social Security recipients will not see this. Their Medicare premiums should have increased but they saw no decrease in their net benefits because of the "hold harmless" provision of the law. Now that there is a COLA, their Medicare Part B premiums will go up, maybe even eliminating any COLA for them.

Quiz

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

More Own Motion Review Coming?

     Social Security has recently formed the Division of Quality in the Office of Appellate Operations. The Division of Quality appears to have been created to select Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) decisions  to be reviewed and overturned by the Appeals Council, a process called "Own Motion Review." Own Motion Review is nothing new. It has been around for decades. The Appeals Council has always insisted that some ALJ decisions that denied disability claims are reviewed but it has always been clear that  vastly more decisions allowing claims are reviewed than decisions denying claims.
     Forming the Division of Quality may be of considerable importance or nothing of consequence. It all depends upon the resources devoted to the Own Motion Reviews.

     I may be paranoid but I have to wonder whether this is related to the recent Wall Street Journal stories about an ALJ in West Virginia who was approving almost all of the disability claims he reviewed. I also have to wonder whether the recent Ruling that will make it almost impossible to file an appeal from an ALJ decision and file a new disability claim at the same time is connected to this. That Ruling will discourage requests for Appeals Council review which will free up more staff time at the Appeals Council which could be used to clear off the huge backlogs at the Appeals Council or which could be used to do far more Own Motion Reviews.

Health Care Coverage Goes Down; Psychiatric Disability Goes Up

     From a press release issued by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health:

The prevalence of self-reported mental health disabilities increased in the U.S. among non-elderly adults during the last decade, according to a study by Ramin Mojtabai, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At the same time, the study found the prevalence of disability attributed to other chronic conditions decreased, while the prevalence of significant mental distress remained unchanged. The findings will appear in the November edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

For the study, Mojtabai reviewed data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey covering 312,364 adults ages 18 to 64 years. He found that the prevalence of self-reported mental health disability increased from 2.0 percent of the non-elderly adult population from 1997 to 1999 to 2.7 percent from 2007 to 2009. According to Mojtabai, the increase equates to nearly 2 million disabled adults. He also noted the increase in the prevalence of mental health disability was mainly among individuals with significant psychological distress who did not use mental health services in the past year. Findings showed that 3.2 percent of participants reported not receiving mental health care for financial reasons between 2007 and 2009, compared to 2.0 percent from 1997 to 1999.

     Beginning in 2014 when the Affordable Care Act fully kicks in, if the Supreme Court does not strike it down and if Republicans cannot find a way to kill it, almost all Americans will have health care coverage and this rate of psychiatric disability should decrease. If you are concerned about the number of people going on Social Security disability, you ought to be concerned about the state of health care in this country because they are directly related.

Worth Reading

A blogger writes about her experience with security at a Social Security field office.

Social Security Functional Assessment Study

The document below was recently received by a number of Social Security claimants in the Greenville, North Carolina area. The document indicates that 10,000 claimants are to be involved in this study. Is this associated with the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP)? Functional Study

Plain Language Required

     Did you know that the Plain Language Act went into effect yesterday? The Act requires Social Security and other agencies to:

(A) designate 1 or more senior officials within the agency to oversee the agency implementation of this Act:
(B) communicate the requirements of this Act to the employees of the agency;
(C) train employees of the agency in plain writing;
(D) establish a process for overseeing the ongoing compliance of the agency with the requirements of this
Act;
(E) create and maintain a plain writing section of the agency’s website as required under paragraph (2) that is accessible from the homepage of the agency’s website; and
(F) designate 1 or more agency points-of-contact to receive and respond to public input on—

(i) agency implementation of this Act; and
(ii) the agency reports required under section 5.

     Thanks to Fedblog for reporting on this. Social Security has the website. There is an official agency plan. Robin Kaplan is in charge of the effort at Social Security.

     I suggest starting with the form letter that Social Security uses to tell people that a hearing office has received a request for hearing. At least, I think the one I have seen here for decades is used nationally. It tells claimants that they will receive 20 days notice of a hearing. I think that half the people receiving that letter think that their hearing is coming up within 20 days after they receive the letter when their hearing may actually be a year or more later. I know that is a misreading but one part of plain writing is trying to reduce misunderstandings.

Scripps Papers Say Social Security Has Released Confidential Information On 400,000 People

From the Scripps newspaper chain:

The Social Security Administration has failed to inform tens of thousands of Americans it accidentally released their names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers in an electronic database widely used by U.S. business groups....

Reporters at newspapers and television stations owned by the E.W. Scripps Co. interviewed dozens of people nationwide who have had security breaches because of what Social Security officials call "inadvertent keying errors" by federal workers when entering what was supposed to be information only about dead people. None reported that the agency warned them about the breach of their confidential information.

Most of those erroneously listed as dead who were contacted for this story said they only found out about the agency's mistakes when they suffered adverse events like frozen bank accounts, canceled cellphones, refused job interviews, declined credit-card applications, denied apartment leases or refused mortgage and student-assistance loans. ...

Social Security officials admit that, each year, they accidentally release the personal information of about 14,000 living Americans by posting their files among the records of 90 million deceased Americans.

If their estimate is accurate, confidential data about more than 400,000 living Americans have been released since 1980 when the DMF became public under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.