New Cancer Listings

     The Social Security Administration has revised its Listings used in adjudicating disability caused by cancer. The new Listings are effective on July 20.

US-India Social Security Agreement Negotiations Resume

     After a gap of five years, the United States and India have resumed negotiations on a Social Security agreement. The United States has Social Security agreements with 25 nations. These typically seek to avoid double taxation of income for transnational employees and to provide for cooperation between Social Security agencies. You can actually file a claim for German social security benefits through a Social Security field office in the United States, for instance. 

     India's Social Security system covers only a small percentage of the country's population and isn't remotely comparable to those of the nations with whom the United States has a Social Security agreement. However, India's economy is booming and there are large numbers of Indian nationals working in the United States and a fair number of American nationals working in India.

     These negotiations may seem unimportant to Americans but they seem quite important to some Indians. Whenever I've posted anything about negotiations on a Social Security agreement with India, this blog has received a ton of hits from India.

Report On Field Office Closures

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) had released a study on field office closures. This was in response to a Senate Special Committee on Aging investigation. The OIG study showes that Social Security's documentation of the office closures included the "primary factors" required by agency policy but not all the information required by agency policy. Social Security plans to update its office closure process.

     This isn't going to satisfy members of Congress who have office closures in their district. Their problem isn't Social Security's process or its documentation. It's the fact that an office is being closed in their district.

     Anyway, below is a table showing a list of Social Security field offices "consolidated", meaning closed, in fiscal year 2014. Why were no offices closed in the Midwest or Mountain states?

And The Payment May Be The Same Today As When This Poster Was Created

The Social Security Administration Posted This On Twitter

Here's the link

Why Do They Even Bother?

     Social Security's Office of Chief Actuary is fighting back against an accusation that it has been too optimistic in its projections for the future of the Retirement and Survivors Trust Fund issuing two papers on the matter.

     The future is inherently unpredictable. Social Security's actuaries don't claim anything close to 100% accuracy. They give ranges. It's hardly their fault that everyone treats their midrange estimate as if it was gospel. How can anyone really expect that advances in human longevity will follow a predictable course? Who can reliably predict the future course of economic growth?

     The dispute is of no consequence anyway. No one would know about it except for right wing operatives spreading the word about an article in an obscure scholarly publication. Almost no one really cares. A difference of a year or two in the exhaustion date of the Trust Fund hardly matters since what really keeps Social Security going isn't a trust fund but the political will of the American people and that is unshaken.

     Republicans argue on the one hand that Social Security will fail because the Trust Fund isn't really real since it only contains U.S. government IOUs and on the other hand argue that Social Security will fail because the Trust Fund will eventually run out of money. These are contradictory arguments. If the Trust Fund isn't really real, what difference does its theoretical exhaustion date make? These arguments have been made for 80 years and have gotten Republicans nowhere. Why do they even bother?

Colvin Endorses Increase In Full Retirement Age -- Apparently Not

     Carolyn Colvin, Social Security's Acting Commissioner, has given an interview to Government Executive magazine. Unlike just a couple of months ago Colvin seems to not be expecting re-nomination for a term as Commissioner. She had been nominated in the last Congress but the Senate never voted on the nomination. She can continue as Acting Commissioner until a Commissioner is nominated and confirmed. Whatever chances she might have had of being nominated and confirmed take a big hit in the last paragraph of the Government Executive piece where Colvin appears to endorse an increase in Social Security's full retirement age.

     Update: To explain what happened after I posted this, you need to understand how all Commissioners of Social Security have dealt for decades with questions about the future financing of Social Security. They always say something like "There are a variety of ways of dealing with the long term financing of Social Security." When asked about a specific way of dealing with the long term financing issues, such as increasing the retirement age or lifting the F.I.C.A. cap, they say "That's one of many ways of dealing with the long term financing issues." Commissioners never express a preference for one technique over another. As much as possible, they want to keep themselves and their agency out of the political crossfire. I expect that they must make firm promises on this score to the White House and to various Senators before nomination and confirmation.
     In the original Government Executive article, Colvin was reported to have mentioned increasing the retirement age as a possible solution (and it would only be a partial solution) for Social Security's long term financing issues without mentioning other possible solutions. If Colvin actually said that, it would have been a massive departure from normal practice which would worry a lot of people.
     The last paragraph in the Government Executive article has been changed and now reads:

In the long term, said the acting commissioner with 20 months to go, “We hope Congress will [take a bipartisan approach], as was done in 1983 under the Greenspan Commission. Our agency’s role is to provide data and analysis to the White House and Congress on the impact of the various proposals.”

     The fact that this appeared in the last paragraph of the piece to begin with suggests that the reporter didn't understand the significance of what he was reporting and that he may not have been as careful in reporting exactly what he had been told as he should have been.

OIG Studies DDS Processing Times

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

We analyzed DI [Disability Insurance] and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] average claims processing times at 51 DDSs [Disability Determination Services] for FY [Fiscal Year] 2013 (we excluded the Puerto Rico DDS from our analysis since it only processed DI claims). In FY 2013, DDS average processing times ranged from 45 to 140 days for DI claims and 49 to 157 days for SSI claims. We mapped the processing times for all 51 DDSs to identify processing times outside the typical range. In doing so, for the DI and SSI programs, we found 44 (86 percent) of 51 DDSs had processing times between 60 and 120 days.

We identified seven DDSs that fell outside of 60- to 120-day ranges for DI and SSI processing times. Specifically, the Florida and Idaho DDSs had DI and SSI processing times shorter than 60 days while the California, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, and Hawaii DDSs had DI and SSI processing times longer than 120 days. Despite differences in processing times, the seven DDSs had allowance rates comparable to the national average and accuracy rates at or above SSA ’s goal.

No Surprise Here

     From a letter from Social Security's Chief Actuary to the Chairmen of the House Social Security and Human Resource Subcommittees:

I am writing in response to your request for an estimate of the financial effects on Social Security of H.R. 2135, “ Promoting Opportunity for Disability Benefit Applicants Act , ” introduced on April 30. This Bill would allow the Commissioner of Social Security to provide information on appropriate public or private entities that provide employment services, vocational rehabilitation services, or other support services to applicants for disability benefits under Title II or Title XVI who are denied benefits based on an adverse determination of disability.  ...

We conclude that enactment of this Bill would most likely have a very small net effect on Title II, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI), benefit cost and Title XVI, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), cost ...

News From NOSSCR

     I received a question from a reader who wanted to know why I hadn't posted news from last week's conference of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR), held in Arlington, VA, just outside D.C. The answer is simple. There really wasn't much news. Here's the little I gleaned.

     Glenn Sklar, the head of Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR), said that things were going to get better because the agency was hiring more Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). However, Sklar couldn't give a clear answer when asked if there would be any net improvement after the expected attrition of ALJs retiring, quitting and dying.

     Senator Sherrod Brown gave a nice speech, promising to fully support Social Security, including disability benefits but Brown's support was never in question. The problem is on the other side of the aisle.

     Ellen Nissenbaum of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) gave a depressing talk about the challenges affecting the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund. Nothing she said would be news to any regular reader of this blog. I thought she was overly pessimistic, talking almost exclusively about the negative while failing to mention the positive -- that Democrats, to this point, are solidly against significant changes in Social Security disability benefits and Republicans haven't produced a bill. Nissenbaum seemed to think that Republicans might get away with saying they would cut "disability" but not Social Security. I wouldn't bet on that working if I were a Republican running in anything other than an extremely safe district. I can see the TV ad now accusing a Republican of cutting, let's say, $100 billion from Social Security. Would it really work for the Republican to go around complaining that the ad is misleading because the $100 billion would be "disability" instead of Social Security?

     Barbara Silverstone, NOSSCR's Executive Director, noted that the attendance at the conference was under 700. In recent years, conference attendance, particularly in D.C., has been around 1,000. The reason the attendance was off wasn't the date or the location or the hotel or anything else like that. It's the fact that it has become extremely challenging to practice Social Security law these days. A fair number of Social Security attorneys are dropping out of the practice. Fewer who are still practicing Social Security law can afford to attend a conference. The next conference is scheduled for the end of October in Denver. That may be the sort of intimate gathering that NOSSCR hasn't seen in decades.