Why Appellate Decisions Matter

     Judge Voorhees of the Western District of North Carolina issued the following order today in 37 Social Security cases pending before him: 

THIS MATTER is before the Court sua sponte in light of Mascio v. Colvin, 780 F.3d 632 (4th Cir. 2015). The parties are hereby directed to consult one another and discuss, in good faith, whether the ruling in Mascio requires sentence four remand pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) for rehearing or other administrative proceedings. The parties shall then advise the Court via Status Report to be filed with the Court on or before June 8, 2015 on this issue, namely, whether remand to the Commissioner of Social Security is appropriate. The Status Report must certify that counsel have, in fact, discussed Mascio and its implications in the specific case. If a consent to remand is not proposed and supplemental briefing is requested by either party, all supplemental filings should be submitted on or before June 15, 2015.

Charlotte's Story: A Video Posted By Social Security

The Faces and Facts of Disability: Charlotte's Story
When Charlotte suffered two strokes in 2007, she was no longer able to work and quickly found herself facing #homelessness. Thankfully, she had earned #SocialSecurity insurance coverage by contributing into the program throughout her working life. Without Social Security payments to replace a portion of her lost income, Charlotte is sure she would be homeless today.Visit http://ow.ly/MqCSK to learn more about the faces and facts of Social Security #disability.
Posted by Social Security Administration on Thursday, May 7, 2015

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.