Congressmen Seek Answers

     A press release:

Today, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John B. Larson (CT-01) and Republican Leader Tom Reed (NY-23) sent two letters to the Social Security Administration (SSA) Inspector General Gail S. Ennis asking for a review of SSA’s telephone service during the COVID-19 pandemic and SSA’s process for obtaining medical evidence for disability claims.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, beneficiaries are relying on their Social Security now more than ever. Except in dire need, beneficiaries are unable to access in-person services and are relying instead on telephone services.

In addition, SSA requests millions of medical records each year from healthcare facilities and health professionals across the country to obtain evidence of an individual’s medical condition.  The medical records request is an important part of the disability process, but the most recent report on this topic from the OIG is from 2001 and does not reflect changes to the process over the past nearly 20 years.

“Social Security benefits are earned by hard-working Americans and we must do everything we can to ensure people are receiving the quality customer service they deserve.  These reports will provide important information to make sure Americans are receiving the service they expect and deserve from SSA,” said Larson and Reed.

The letter on telephone service can be found here.

The letter on medical evidence of record can be found here.

Some Things The House Appropriations Committee Is Concerned About

     Some excerpts from the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee report on the Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations bill (starts at page 298) that includes the Social Security Administration:

• The Committee considers the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) ‘‘Hearings Held by Administrative Appeals Judges of the Appeals Council’’ (84 Fed. Reg. 70080, December 20, 2019) to be an unjustified erosion of due process for individuals who are appealing a denial of Social Security or SSI benefits. As part of a beneficiary’s right to an impartial appeal process, an on-the-record hearing, conducted by an impartial judge with decisional independence, must be conducted in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act to ensure due process, with-out agency interference, or political bias. Replacing this appeals step and the role of independent administrative law judges (ALJ)s with SSA employees, jeopardizes the independence of the process. In light of the harm that would be caused by this policy change, the Committee strongly urges SSA to immediately withdraw this proposed rule. 
• The Committee is deeply concerned about the impact of Presidential Executive Order 13843 on the judicial independence of administrative law judges (ALJs). The Order eliminates the competitive hiring process for ALJs and has the potential impact of converting independent adjudicators to political appointees, undermining longstanding principles of fair and unbiased consideration of matters of vital importance to the American people. ALJs must be independent decision-makers and it is the Committee’s expectation that SSA maintain the highest standards for appointment of ALJs. The Committee directs the Ad-ministration to develop and submit to the Committees on Appro-priations, Ways and Means,and Oversight and Reform, a report on hiring processes, to include an explanation of the process, qualification standards, and criteria used to recruit, evaluate and hire ALJs.
  
• The Committee is concerned that persistent labor-management relations problems are undermining the vital work of the SSA. Within 180 days of enactment of this Act, SSA is directed to submit to the Committee a plan, developed in consultation with labor organizations representing its workforce, to improve workplace morale and to strengthen employee recruitment and retention, to better serve the American people.
• The Committee stresses its long-standing support for well-managed telework programs in the Federal workplace and is concerned about recent reductions in telework at SSA. Within 60 days of enactment of this Act, SSA is directed to submit a report to the Committee to explain each decision by SSA to reduce telework availability on or after October 1, 2019, which shall include any metrics used by SSA to reach these determinations, and an impact assessment on human capital in hiring and retention, in-creases to transit and parking subsidies, office space and utility needs changes, lost productivity and morale decline due to lost telework.
• The Committee expects that once the COVID–19 pandemic ends SSA will resume in-person hearings on the same basis as prior to the pandemic.

      Some caveats: This is just the House version. The Senate gets a say as well. These are just recommendations. Even if finally passed they're not legally binding. This bill probably won't be finalized until early next year. There may be some new actors on the stage by then.

"Plan F"?

     Mike Causey at Federal News Network has penned a column saying that there may be a "plan F" to force employees at Social Security and other agencies such as the I.R.S. to return to the office, despite the risks posed by Covid-19. He says that there may be a desire to force experienced employees to retire. This would fit in with the Trump Administration push to reopen the economy, consequences be damned, as well as the Administration's general contempt for federal employees. Causey quotes some federal employees who state their fears there is a plan to force federal employees back to the office but the column is elliptical. It sounds like Causey has some information suggesting that these fears are grounded in fact. Where did he get this "plan F" business?

They Really Don't Want You To Read This

     Earlier this month I posted about a large cache of "proactive" disclosures of information posted on Social Security's Freedom Of Information Act Reading Room. That large cache has been completely taken down. But, you know what? It's all still stored on Google Cache!

No, Internet Services Aren't Causing The Field Offices To Fade Away

     One of the proactive disclosures recently posted by Social Security is data on in-person visits to Social Security field offices in Fiscal Year 2019. There were 43,467,832 of them. They have it broken down by field office.

A Minimum 2.5% COLA Every Year: If The UK Can Do It, Why Can’t We?

     From Forbes:

In the United States, Social Security benefits increase in line with inflation, that is the CPI-W. Presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden, as well as others advocating for boosts for recipients, support a shift to a special (but currently experimental) windex for elderly-specific inflation. Others support a shift to the “chained-CPI” in which weightings are adjusted whenever people shift their buying patterns due to disproportionate price hikes (e.g., buying more chicken, less beef, means that the lower CPI for chicken would be more relevant than the higher CPI for beef, in a “chained” calculation). But ...  the U.S. is actually in the minority, in terms of developed countries, in adjusting its Social Security benefits solely based on inflation; other countries are likely to use wage increases or a combination of both inflation and wage increases. (Should the United States make such a change? In a perfect world, maybe — but it’s hardly practical when we’re still unable to make the necessary changes to restore the system to sustainability in the first place.) 

But the UK goes even further: its pensions increase each year by the greater of inflation, the average wage increase, or 2.5%. ...

OIG Report On Field Office Service

     In response to a request from Congressman John Larson, the Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has produced a report on Field Office Customer Service. Below are some tables and charts from that report. Click on each image to view full size.

     By the way, the transmittal letter from Gail Ennis, the Inspector General, says that "My office is committed to combating fraud, waste, and abuse in the Agency’s operations and programs." That's fine but there's no mention of customer service being part of OIG's mission even in a report on customer service. That may tell you something there about how Ms. Ennis views her office's responsibilities. Would her office ever look at customer service without being prodded to do so by Congress?

This Must Be Why There Will Be A Social Security Subcommittee Hearing Tomorrow

     John Larson, the Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, has come up with a bill that would make some modest changes in Social Security aimed at reducing inequities caused by Covid-19. He's asked Social Security's Chief Actuary to tally the costs. It's pretty much small bore stuff -- $75 billion over ten years, all to be reimbursed out of general revenues. It will certainly be going nowhere in this Congress. Who knows about the next Congress? I imagine this proposal will be the focus of tomorrow's Subcommittee hearing.

Arrests In Large Impostor Scheme

     From a press release:

The Inspector General for the Social Security Administration, Gail S. Ennis, is announcing the arraignment of two individuals in a significant Social Security imposter telephone scam case. Chaitali Dave, 36, and Mehulkumar Patel, 36, both of Lexington, South Carolina are facing Federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering in the Northern District of Georgia. ... This husband and wife are alleged to have retrieved over $400,000 from at least 24 victims of Social Security and tech support scam phone calls. 

According to the indictment, Patel and Dave are members of a network based in India that defrauded U.S. residents, including senior citizens, by using technical support and Social Security number scams. The scheme often involved call center employees pretending to be government officials. These scammers deceived victims by telling them their Social Security numbers were involved in criminal activity. They threatened arrest and loss of assets if the victims did not send funds via FedEx and UPS. 

Patel and Dave allegedly facilitated the scheme by collecting and transferring funds received from scam victims nationwide to those running the scam operation. Our investigation found evidence they defrauded at least 24 victims from May 2019 to January 2020, causing financial and emotional harm. ...

All Quiet On The Reopening Front

     From Federal News Network:

As several large departments make plans to reopen their offices to employees and the public during the pandemic, one agency has been relatively quiet.

The Social Security Administration, which made a series of contentious cuts to its telework program in the month leading up to the pandemic, has not called employees back to their offices en masse, nor has the agency indicated when it might do so.

Several agencies have published or distributed multi-phase reopening plans to their workforces in recent months, which describe, in varying levels of detail, how employees will gradually return to their offices and what to expect upon arrival.

Neither employees nor the unions that represent the SSA workforce have seen any kind of “reopening plan” from the agency, though they acknowledged it didn’t mean SSA doesn’t have one. ...

SSA declined to comment on its specific reopening plans, and it didn’t offer any timelines or details on how telework might fit into the agency’s future.

“We are monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and are evaluating guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management,” an SSA spokesman said in a statement to Federal News Network. “Many of our visitors are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Our goal is to continue to serve the American public while doing what we can to reduce the risk to our employees and visitors.” ...