Why $11 Billion In Overpayments Is Pretty Good

     From the Federal Eye column in the Washington Post:

[The Government Accountability Office] reported that, from 2005-2014, the Social Security Disability Insurance program overpaid $11 billion to beneficiaries who earned too much money to qualify for full benefits. An untrained observer might think this represented an unconscionable squandering of public funds.  ...

But on the first page of the report, GAO notes that SSA paid out approximately $143 billion in disability benefits in 2014 alone. SSA’s own actuarial estimates put the total ten-year outlay from 2005-2014 at $1.169 trillion, compared to $11 billion in overpayments. That’s less than 1 percent of total expenditures.

Furthermore, all $11 billion wasn’t lost to the government. SSA can claw back overpayments from disability beneficiaries in subsequent years. In fact, GAO reveals on page 9 of its report that SSA collected $7.8 billion in outstanding debt in the ten-year time frame. Only $1.4 billion in work-related overpayments were completely written off. Now we’re down to 0.12 percent of total expenditures. ...

If I were to tell you that the Social Security disability program was 99.88 percent accurate in issuing benefit amounts to recipients, you might think they were doing an outstanding job. But if I told you the program overpaid by $11 billion – while neglecting to mention how they clawed most of it back – you might dust off your pitchfork and join your local mob’s march to the nearest SSA satellite office. ...

The drumbeat of stories about stray billions lost here and spent there serves the side of our national debate that wants to reduce the size of government and privatize many of its functions. They’re given an artificial boost by reporting which flatters their prejudices. It’s hard to advocate for expanding social benefits amid inaccurate tales of waste. And this can have real consequences. ...

[L]ast week’s budget deal creates roving Cooperative Disability Investigations units, special Justice Department prosecutors and expanded reviews to look into suspected fraud. The changes result directly from the insistence of Congressional Republicans, aided by the media, that the disability program is rife with fraud.

But the budget deal’s reforms sound like something you would invest in to police a broken agency, not one with a 99.88 percent accuracy rate. Any private-sector company with a record as sterling as the disability program would be lauded as an industry model. But thanks to the massive amount of money they pump out on an annual basis, they can be demonized for minor slippages.

     And let's not forget to mention the active collusion of the GAO and Social Security's Office of Inspector General with Republican efforts to present overpayment information in a misleading way.

Colvin On Leadership

    Tom Fox of the Washington Post recently interviewed the Acting Commissioner of Social Security, Carolyn Colvin, on the subject of leadership.

I Can't Access OIG Website Due To Security Problem

     I received an e-mail notification that Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued an audit report on Social Security Administration Employees with Conduct Issues Who Received Monetary Award. The title sounds interesting. However, when I try to access the report, I get this message:

This Connection is Untrusted

You have asked Firefox to connect securely to oig.ssa.gov, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.
Normally, when you try to connect securely, sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are going to the right place. However, this site's identity can't be verified.
What Should I Do?

If you usually connect to this site without problems, this error could mean that someone is trying to impersonate the site, and you shouldn't continue.

This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.

oig.ssa.gov uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)

     See if you can get in.

Congressional Hearing Tomorrow

     The Joint Economic Committee of Congress has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow afternoon (November 4) at 2:30 on Ensuring Success for the Social Security Disability Insurance Program and Its Beneficiaries. The scheduled witnesses are:

• Patrick O’Carroll, Jr., Inspector General Social Security Administration
• Mark Duggan, the Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics Stanford University
• Rebecca Vallas, Director of Policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program Center for American Progress

EAJA Payments In Social Security Cases Increasing Rapidly

     Social Security has recently released information on payments it has made under the Equal Access of Justice Act (EAJA), which shifts the cost of attorney fees to the government in some cases where a claimant is the prevailing party in a civil action in the federal courts. Here are the numbers

2010	$19,743,189.12
2011	$21,668,646.47
2012	$24,666,171.13
2013	$27,720,951.87
2014	$31,637,462.36

29% Opting Out Of Video Hearings

     Social Security has released information on claimants who are opting out of video hearings. This year 29.25% are opting out, which is a lot less than I thought it would be. In my opinion, it's a lot less than it should be.

Take The Test

     Money Magazine has an online quiz so you can "Test Your Social Security IQ." I'm proud to say I answered all the questions correctly.

Retirement Inequality

     From a study by the Center for Effective Government:

Company-sponsored retirement assets of just 100 CEOs are equal to those of more than 40 percent of American families. 

• The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion. That’s equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American families (more than 50 million families and more than 116 million people).
• On average, the CEOs’ nest eggs are worth more than $49.3 million, enough to generate a $277,686 monthly retirement check for the rest of their lives. 
• David Novak of YUM Brands had the largest retirement nest egg in the Fortune 500 in 2014, with $234 million, while hundreds of thousands of his Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC employees have no company retirement assets whatsoever. ...
• Fortune 500 CEOs saved $78 million on their 2014 tax bills by putting $197 million more in these tax-deferred accounts than they could have if they were subject to the same rules as other workers. These special accounts grow tax - free until the executives retire and begin to withdraw the funds. 
• The Fortune 500 CEOs had more in their company-sponsored deferred compensation accounts than 53.8 percent of American families had in their deferred compensation accounts. ...

New Fraud Provision In The Grand Deal

     Let's take a closer look at some of the Social Security portions of the grand deal which is likely to be approved by Congress in the next few days. I'll start out with the fraud provision that I said earlier looked to me as if it makes it a crime to submit medical evidence in support of a disability claim. I didn't mean to suggest that was going to happen. I know this isn't the intent. This looks like a drafting error to me. Here's the statute involved as it will read after this is enacted, with the new portion bolded:

42 U.S.C. §1011 (a)  In general Whoever—

     (1) knowingly and willfully makes or causes to be made any false statement or representation of a material fact in an application for benefits under this subchapter; 

     (2) at any time knowingly and willfully makes or causes to be made any false statement or representation of a material fact for use in determining any right to the benefits; 

     (3) having knowledge of the occurrence of any event affecting—

          (A) his or her initial or continued right to the benefits; or

         (B) the initial or continued right to the benefits of any other individual in whose behalf he or she has applied for or is receiving the benefit,

conceals or fails to disclose the event with an intent fraudulently to secure the benefit either in a greater amount or quantity than is due or when no such benefit is authorized; or  

     (4) having made application to receive any such benefit for the use and benefit of another and having received it, knowingly and willfully converts the benefit or any part thereof to a use other than for the use and benefit of the other individual, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both; or

      (5) conspires to commit any offense described in any of paragraphs (1) through (3) except that in the case of a person who receives a fee or other income for services performed in connection with any determination with respect to benefits under this title (including a claimant representative, translator, or current or former employee of the Social Security Administration), or who is a physician or other health care provider who submits, or causes the submission of, medical or other evidence in connection with any such determination, such person shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both.’’.

     This doesn't make sense. The new language seems to make it illegal to submit evidence without specifying that it's only illegal to knowingly submit false or misleading evidence which was almost certainly the intent. I don't think anyone is going to be prosecuted under this even if they're guilty as sin because the language is so confusing.

     The right wing extremists in the Freedom Caucus have been demanding "regular order" in the House of Representatives, meaning that they want bills to progress from Subcommittee to Committee to the House floor with members having the opportunity to carefully study the bills and offer amendments. I agree with them on this if nothing else. Regular order helps prevent this sort of problem. Members of Congress, their staffs or outside individuals have a chance to study a bill and point out problems, including drafting errors. The problems can be sorted out before a bill becomes law. However, I've seen plenty of problems like this one in legislation signed by the President even when there is "regular order." Such problems are typically cleaned up with technical corrections acts but the Congressional sclerosis has gotten so bad that it's now difficult to even pass technical corrections acts.

More On Contracting For Rep Payee Reviews

     I had posted earlier today on Social Security's notice seeking a contractor to handle representative payee reviews. I received this e-mail in response:

Dear Mr. Hall,

We read your blog post Contractor Sought To Handle Representative Payee Reviews and agree with your assessment.

In 2009, the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) and our members, the Protection and Advocacy System (P&A), became involved with representative payee reviews following the discovery of horrific abuse and neglect of thirty-two men with disabilities by Henry's Turnkey Service, an organizational representative payee in Iowa who also employed the beneficiaries.

Following the discovery of the abuse and financial exploitation by Henry's, SSA moved very quickly to determine whether other organizational payees were employing and exploiting the beneficiaries they were appointed to serve. As part of this effort, SSA turned to NDRN and the P&A agencies to conduct reviews of organizational representative payees who also employ beneficiaries.

They chose us because P&A agencies are a nationwide network of legal services agencies who provide services specifically to people with disabilities. Our mission is to advocate for and protect the basic rights of individuals with a wide range of disabilities. The services that P&A agencies are created to provide squarely positioned us to carry out SSA s representative payee reviews and we have been awarded the reviews every year since 2009.

Unfortunately, SSA's recent announcement that the Representative Payee monitoring project going forward would only be performed by a small business forecloses the ability of the NDRN and the P&A agencies from competing to perform this work in the future because NDRN is a nonprofit organization and cannot compete for a small business set aside contract.

SSA has already spent extensive resources to clear 261 P&A monitors in every state, the District of Columbia and the Native American P&A. P&A agencies have done 3,415 reviews which included interviews with 15,974 beneficiaries. It is baffling to us why now they would choose to exclude us in favor of an untested small business who may have no experience working with the disability population. Beneficiaries are all across the country and sometimes in different states than their representative payee.  Is a small business going to be a capable monitor in this nationwide environment?

Your observation that  this is the sort of thing best done by experienced personnel who are located in the communities where the representative payees live  is exactly correct. And being a nationwide network of disability advocates, we are those experienced personnel who have been doing it with great success.

Of the reviews that have already taken place, 84% of the NDRN and P&A identified reviews discovered problems, while only 65% of the other SSA initiated reviews found problems. This is a clear indication to us that our knowledge and expertise on disability related issues are necessary for the representative payee project to be successful in protecting beneficiaries. 

Excluding NDRN from applying for this contract would be a grave disservice to an already vulnerable population.

Please feel free to use any or all parts of this letter on your blog.

Sincerely,

Curt Decker

Executive Director

National Disability Rights Network