Dec 18, 2020

Social Security Starts To Track Disability Claims As A Result Of Covid-19


      Social Security has issued an Emergency Message telling its staff to start flagging disability claims where Covid-19 is alleged as an impairment. They're not giving any instructions on how to adjudicate the cases. For now, they just want to track them.

     We'll see how common disability claims as a result of Covid-19 will be. Thus far in my practice, I have clients who have had Covid-19 but none who have suffered long term consequences as a result of the infection. I've not taken on any new clients alleging Covid-19 as an impairment. I haven't heard from other attorneys who have. It's still early, though. There may be cases coming but those affected are still hoping they'll get better. Remember, there's a 12 month duration requirement in the definition of disability that Social Security must use. You can be very, very sick but still recover in less than 12 months.

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Dec 17, 2020

Try To Get Paid Before Checking Out

... When underpaid beneficiaries are deceased, SSA should pay the underpayment to a surviving spouse, child, or parent or to the legal representative of the decedent’s estate. ...

SSA did not always take proper actions to pay underpayments due terminated beneficiaries. In December 2015, SSA improved systems controls to pay underpayments due deceased beneficiaries to eligible surviving spouses. However, this control does not identify underpayments due to all terminated beneficiaries. For the 100 terminated beneficiaries in our sample, we found

  • 39 had underpayments that should be paid to eligible beneficiaries;
  • 25 were cases where SSA did not locate the beneficiaries or individuals who were eligible for the underpayments;
  • 7 had erroneous underpayments that should have been corrected or removed from the Master Beneficiary Record; and
  • 29 were correctly paid or resolved. ...
      When one of my clients dies, which is not a rare occurrence, I always make sure to find and alert the person due whatever back benefits there may be. I've always had the impression that unless I did it or some survivor of the decedent contacted Social Security, there was a good chance that it wouldn't get done, that the back benefits would never get paid.
     By the way, it's also not unusual for one of my clients to ask what happens if they die before getting paid. Yes, some of them are pessimistic enough to ask that question even though they're not facing a life threatening condition.
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Dec 16, 2020

DAC Claims Get Missed All The Time

      From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

... An SSI recipient may be eligible for CDB [Child Disability Benefits -- Disabled Adult Child Benfits or DAC is what they're usually called] as a disabled child on a wage earner’s record [the father or mother] under the OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] program when the recipient meets the criteria for benefits. To conduct our review, we identified 1,017 SSI recipients who were potentially eligible for CDB from 1 of 20 segments in SSA’s system. From this population, we selected a random sample of 50 recipients for review.

... [W]e identified SSI recipients who were eligible for CDB. Our analysis of 50 SSI recipients identified 22 who were potentially eligible for, and 15 potentially technically entitled to, CDB. This occurred because SSA did not always (1) develop and dispose of leads related to CDB and/or (2) identify SSI recipients eligible for CDB during reviews of their non-medical eligibility factors and SSI payment amounts. Separate from our review, SSA has conducted projects, which identify SSI recipients who were potentially eligible for CDB. Based on the results of our review, we estimate 8,140 SSI recipients were potentially eligible for CDB and may be due underpayments totaling approximately $18.5 million. If SSA does not take action, we estimate the 8,140 SSI recipients may lose an additional $3.6 million over a 12-month period. ...

     In my experience there are two types of benefits that are very frequently missed: Disabled Adult Child and Widowers benefits. Parents benefits are usually missed but there are very, very few entitled to Parents benefits. I always discuss the possibility of DAC benefits with young disability claimants. Even if they're not eligible now because neither of their parents is on Social Security benefits or retired, they'll need the information for later. I also make a point of asking both older male and older female clients about their marital status so I don't miss Widows and Widowers claims.


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Dec 15, 2020

Should Social Security's Administrative Costs Be Considered Part Of The Appropriations Process?

     From Social Security Transition Report For The Biden Administration, prepared by Social Security Works, an advocacy group:

... Section 13301(a) of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 unambiguously states:

 “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the receipts and disbursements of the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund shall not be counted as new budget authority, outlays, receipts, or deficit or surplus for purposes of (1) the Budget of the United States Government, (2) the Congressional budget, or (3) the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”

Social Security’s cash benefits, which are paid from the program’s trust funds, are, appropriately, not subject to annual appropriations or spending caps imposed by recent budget agreements. That is wise: Social Security has its own dedicated revenue. It cannot pay monies in excess of its income and assets, and it has no borrowing authority. Consequently, it does not add even a penny to the federal debt. Without any logic whatsoever, however, the associated administrative costs, which are also paid from trust fund monies, are subject to the annual appropriations process and the spending caps imposed by recent budget agreements. There is no legal authority for the different treatment of administrative costs. That different treatment results from an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) interpretation of ambiguous language, in the report accompanying the conference agreement, of the enactment of the above legislative language. That OMB decision, made during President George H.W. Bush’s administration in the early 1990s, was deeply flawed.

 Under well-established, uncontroversial principles of statutory interpretation, the clear statement in the actual law governs, and should not be overridden by ambiguities or even contradictions in the legislative history. Consistent with those principles, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) disagreed with OMB. (Indeed, CBO offered a different interpretation of the ambiguous report language.) So did the then-Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, in a letter he wrote to the OMB director. Nevertheless, OMB did not change its position, and that decision continues to affect the way that Social Security’s administrative costs are treated to this very day.We urge President Biden to instruct OMB to revoke the erroneous interpretation, and present his budgets in accordance with the clear, unambiguous language quoted above. Social Security’s administrative budget should not have to compete with other agencies for its administrative funding in the annual appropriations process. ...

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Dec 14, 2020

Video Hearing Stats

      Social Security has posted numbers showing how many video hearings it has held recently. These are hearings where the claimant is at home connecting via a laptop, tablet computer or cell phone. The numbers are confusing since it includes a column purporting to show the number of in-person hearings being held but that's not the case. No in-person hearings have been held since March. Maybe that column is actually the number of telephone hearings? 
     Obviously, this is very uneven. I don't know what accounts for some offices holding no video hearings while others have held many video hearings.
     I wish that the agency would show totals per region and nationally.

 Hearing Office                                  In-person(?)   Video    Total

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