Glitches With Some Telephone Hearings

      I don't know how widespread the problem is but I'm hearing of serious technical problems with Social Security's telephone hearings affecting several hearing offices in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. This could be just a regional thing. I hope that whatever is causing it gets fixed soon. My general impression, however, is that the audio quality on these telephone hearings has gone down over time.

Eliminating Barriers For Conducting Consultative Examinations?

     Social Security has asked the Office of Management and Budget to approve interim final regulations on "Eliminating Barriers for Conducting Consultative Examinations." I don't know what's in this package.

We Need To Make Sure This Works For Everyone

      I posted yesterday that the Microsoft Teams app that Social Security plans to use to hold Administrative Law Judge hearings wasn't available for my desktop and therefore probably wasn't available for laptops either. I received responses saying that it certainly was available to desktops. Take a look at this screenshot and tell me that it's available to everyone at the moment:

     Perhaps it's included in recent versions of the Microsoft Office Suite but I don't think people should have to buy that to participate in these hearings. Maybe there's some other explanation but the page shown above says what it says and the fact that you haven't gotten such a message doesn't make what I'm seeing an illusion. We need to make sure this works for everyone.

Social Security Planning To Use Platform For Video Hearings That Doesn't Currently Work With Most Laptops

     Beginning in November Social Security is planning to use the Microsoft Teams app for Administrative Law Judge video hearings during the pandemic but I see this message when I go to the Microsoft Teams website "Teams for your personal life is only available for iOS and Android. Desktop and web coming soon." This would rule out Windows laptops, which is most of them. You can do these hearings with handheld cellphones but that's not going to give you a stable image. Also, while they’re not heavy, holding up a cell phone for an hour could become tiring. I hope they get this sorted out by November.

Social Security Relies On The U.S. Mail

      From the New York Times:

Top Democrats are warning that the problems afflicting the United States Postal Service pose a threat to more than voting rights — a slowdown in services, they say, will also hurt seniors who rely on letter carriers for Social Security checks, medications and other critical mail. ...

Over the past two decades, the Social Security Administration has shifted to electronic payment for most beneficiaries, but that doesn’t mean the agency’s operations are not vulnerable to delays in mail service.

The agency currently pays 99 percent of Social Security beneficiaries via direct deposit to a checking or savings account, or a government-issued debit card. But nearly 850,000 paper checks still are mailed each month to recipients of retirement, disability and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Social Security also sends and receives millions of pieces of mail every year, including notifications, requests for information, Medicare enrollment forms and replacement Social Security cards. More isolated, rural parts of the country are particularly vulnerable to problems within the postal system.

Moreover, the shutdown since March of Social Security’s national network of field offices because of the pandemic means that more business is being transacted through the Postal Service that normally would be handled through in-person visits. ...

Nowadays, Social Security sends 350 million pieces of mail annually to support its programs, according to an agency report last year. ...

Sounds Bad But I’d Like To Hear The Other Side Of This

      From Government Executive:

Less than 24 hours before Hurricane Laura made along along the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, officials at the Social Security Administration told employees at its Lake Charles, La., field office that they would not be eligible for weather and safety leave.

Instead, employees forced to evacuate ahead of the hurricane were expected to work remotely from their hotel rooms on unsecured public Wi-Fi connections or take annual or sick leave, just three hours after the storm had left the area.  

Joel Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which represents Social Security workers in Louisiana, said management informed employees they would not be able to take weather and safety leave in a teleconference meeting Wednesday morning. .Although there is no written record of the leave denial, an IT employee sent all employees in the office instructions on how to connect to the agency’s virtual private network over public wireless Internet connections. ...

Major Downturn In SSI Awards

      From David Weaver, writing for The Hill:

... In May, June, and July of this year, SSA awarded 5,038, 4,572, and 5,122 elderly individuals SSI benefits, respectively. The June award figure is the smallest number of monthly awards for the elderly in the last 20 years. The May and July figures are the second and third smallest in the last 20 years. Further, the total number of awards in these three months is 42 percent lower than the number of awards to the elderly for the comparable 3-month period in 2019.

Problems have now materialized for the disabled groups as well. In July of this year, SSA awarded SSI benefits to 25,200 disabled adults ages 18 to 64. That is the lowest monthly award figure in the last 20 years for this group. It is also 40 percent lower than the figure for this group for July of 2019. ...

     Weaver is blaming the downturn on lack of outreach. Maybe, but I'm pretty sure that having the field offices closed to walk-in traffic is a bigger factor. You certainly can't blame this downturn on disability determination since this includes a major downturn in people qualifying on account of age alone. Those claims don't go through disability determination.

New List For Service Of Process

      The Social Security Administration has announced a new list of addresses for service of process. 

     For non-attorney readers, I'll explain. Social Security gets sued a lot -- something like eight or ten thousand times a year, if I remember correctly. Mostly, these are denied claimants appealing. When you sue someone, you have to tell them they've been sued. That's called service of process. Generally, this isn't that difficult. You deliver it to the person's residence or to the headquarters of a business or other entity. However, Social Security gets sued enough that their attorneys who respond to these lawsuits are broken down into Offices of Regional Counsel as well as the Office of General Counsel in Baltimore. They want service of process to the office that will be responding to the lawsuit. The assignments to these components change from time to time so they have to put out new lists to tell you where to serve process on them.

Regs On Overpayment Waivers During Pandemic Coming Tomorrow

      The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has already approved Interim Final Regulations on "Waiver of recovery of certain overpayments accruing during the COVID-19 pandemic period." They are being published in the Federal Register tomorrow. Read them today.

     The weird thing about these regulations is that they apply to overpayments that occur between March 1 and September 30, 2020 and which are identified by December 31, 2020. Does Social Security seriously think it will be able to fully process its workloads by the end of September? Why would the agency automatically waive an overpayment based upon when the overpayment is identified rather than when it occurred. From the point of view of the claimant, that makes no sense. I don't see how it makes any sense even from Social Security's point of view.

     The regulations fail to identify which overpayments they apply to. They merely refer to overpayments occurring "because of the actions that we took in response to the COVID-19 national public health emergency, including the suspension of certain of our manual workloads that would have processed actions identifying and stopping certain overpayments." Could you be a little more specific? As an attorney representing claimants I don't like a standard that sounds like "We'll waive 'em if we want to and if we don't, you can't complain about it because we never promised you anything."

     Even under the circumstances I think the agency should have thought these regulations through a bit better. I'd call this sloppy. At least the public can comment on them. My guess is that there will be comments and that the agency will have to modify them before we're done with this issue.

Don't Let Anybody Tell You Social Security Is Getting All Its Work Done During Covid-19

      I was having a discussion -- via e-mail -- with several legal assistants at my law firm recently about their experiences over the last few months trying to communicate with PC3, that is, Social Security's Third Payment Center, the one in Birmingham, AL, which handles much of the business of computing and authorizing benefits in the Southeastern United States. Here's what they had to say:

• Horrible, 19 out of 20 times no one answers.  Actually, even that stat is high.
• They never answer for me.  I have been asking for help from DO [District Office] to send Mgr [manager] to mgr messages.
• I haven’t been able to get through to anyone there since March. I have the DO send mgr to mgr messages to them and still don’t get any results.
• It is terrible.  I have called repeatedly and I can never reach anyone.  It does not allow you to leave a voice mail.  The only time I have seen action is if the DO requests that they do something or if I send a fax.  Sometimes I have aggravated people at other PCs that have contacted PC3.  
•  PC 3 is horrible