What Will Social Security Do About The Marasco & Nesslebush Case?

      I had written recently about Social Security's inability to react to an adverse ruling by a court at anything other than a glacial pace. Let me ask when the agency might decide what it's going to do about Marasco & Nesselbush v. Collins. On July 16, 2021 the First Circuit Court of Appeals held that:

... SSA's rule barring payments to attorneys for work completed before they enter government service is both arbitrary and, in some circumstances, in conflict with the statutory mandate to pay "a reasonable fee" for successful representation of SSA claimants. ...

and further held that:

... SSA must adjust its rules, as described above, to ensure that the law firms that employ salaried associates to represent SSA claimants may receive direct payment of the attorney's fees to which the firms' associates are entitled for representation performed while employed by those law firms. ...

     This didn't go to the Supreme Court so Social Security has no choice but to implement it in the First Circuit area (most of New England) but it makes little sense to try to apply it just to that one area of the country. Payment centers all over the country are involved in authorizing attorney fees in the cases of claimants residing in the First Circuit area. Why would you want to have two systems? I can't exclude the possibility that Social Security will be that pig-headed but I hope that wiser heads prevail. Something should have been done about this problem decades ago.

So, Wendell Primus Is The Problem?

      From The Intercept:

Democratic Rep. John Larson of Connecticut has written a bill titled“Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust” that would immediately expand the program’s benefits for all 65 million recipients. It has at least 200 co-sponsors, all Democrats, in the House. And increasing Social Security payments should be an easy lift for Democrats, especially in an election year.

Yet the bill still awaits a vote in the Subcommittee on Social Security — chaired by Larson — of the House Ways and Means Committee, much less a vote on the floor. Why?

Part of the answer appears to be Wendell Primus, a senior aide to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Primus is seen by many in the world of Washington, D.C., progressive politics as embodying a mindset from the Democratic Party’s past, when all that seemed possible was preventing cuts to important social programs, rather than going on offense.

Primus “passionately cares about children, he’s always made the point that we have to make sure that we’re taking care of the children,” Larson said in a recent appearance on The Intercept’s podcast Deconstructed. “Wendell’s concern would be that there’s only so much money to go around. We have only so many expenditures.” Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. …

According to Larson, Mark Meadows, former chair of the House Freedom Caucus and later chief of staff for former President Donald Trump, once told him that if his legislation “makes it to the floor, you’re going to find a lot of Republicans are going to be voting for [it].”

Social Security 2100 would then face a tougher challenge in the Senate. According to Senate rules, changes cannot be made to Social Security via the reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority. It would therefore need to attract the votes of all 50 Democratic senators as well as 10 Republicans to end a certain filibuster. …

Workshop On Covid And Social Security Disability

      From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

REGISTER HERE

Monday, March 21, 2022 | 10:30am - 4:00pm ET

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 | 10:30am - 3:30pm ET

A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will hold a public workshop to explore the long-term and potentially disabling health effects stemming from COVID-19 infection and how they might impact survivors’ ability to work.

This two-day virtual workshop, sponsored by the U.S. Social Security Administration, will bring together invited experts to discuss a range of topic a

reas including:

• Overview of long COVID, characteristics of the population affected, and research initiatives underway
• Postacute sequelae of SARS-COV-2 infection and implications for recovery
• Experiences of long COVID patients and their caregivers
• Long-term impairments from COVID-19 and effects on work-related functioning
• Best practices to improve recovery and potential future advancements in knowledge

The workshop agenda and list of confirmed speakers will be posted to this page soon.

     By the way, my impression over the years has been that the National Academies are less a scholarly organization and more a Beltway Bandit, set up to attract lavish consulting contracts from government agencies. They always produce lengthy reports that say nothing of consequence and which contain the vaguest imaginable recommendations, except that there's always a definite recommendation for more "research", presumably done by them. I've never seen a report from a Beltway Bandit that had the slightest impact on actual operations at Social Security. Hiring them is what you do when you think you're supposed to do something but you really don't want to do anything other than kick the can down the road.

     It doesn't take any grant of money from Social Security for me to tell you the state of knowledge at this point. There hasn't been enough time elapsed to get a really good idea of the long term impacts of Covid. While there are suggestions that Covid will lead to disability claims, either directly or indirectly, there hasn't been more than a trickle of such claims filed at Social Security so far. No one knows what that means. I'll be amazed if we learn anything more specific that that at this workshop.

Post-Covid Anxiety And Depression

      From the New York Times:

Social isolation, economic stress, loss of loved ones and other struggles during the pandemic have contributed to rising mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

But can having Covid itself increase the risk of developing mental health problems? A large new study suggests it can.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, analyzed records of nearly 154,000 Covid patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and compared their experience in the year after they recovered from their initial infection with that of a similar group of people who did not contract the virus.

The study included only patients who had no mental health diagnoses or treatment for at least two years before becoming infected with the coronavirus, allowing researchers to focus on psychiatric diagnoses and treatment that occurred after coronavirus infection.

 People who had Covid were 39 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 35 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety over the months following infection than people without Covid during the same period, the study found. Covid patients were 38 percent more likely to be diagnosed with stress and adjustment disorders and 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders than uninfected people. ...

     You might say this won't have much impact on Social Security since there aren't many people found disabled due to depression and anxiety much less stress and adjustment disorders but I think that would be naive. Depression, anxiety, stress and adjustment disorders are bad for a person's physical health. These conditions also make people less able to cope with their physical ailments. There are many people who are still tenuously holding on to employment despite serious physical health problems. Add in depression and anxiety and those health problems can become too much to bear while still working. There are many people on the borderline who are still working but who can be easily tipped in the other direction. There's also the question of Covid's effects on those who already suffered significant mental illness. What effects will Covid have on people with bipolar disorder, for instance? I'm sure somebody is studying that question but I haven't heard of any research reports yet.

     I'm getting almost no calls from people with post-Covid syndrome but we'll have to see whether Covid is a significant indirect factor in producing disability.

It's Nearly Impossible To Get Through To Social Security On The Phone

 

     From CNBC (emphasis added):

When Charlene Latsha calls the Social Security Administration, she’s placed on hold for so long that she hangs up.

Latsha, 70, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has been trying to reach the government agency about her husband’s application for retirement benefits. Though he has been disabled and unable to work for the past two years, he is unable to claim disability benefits. But as he turns 65, the couple decided now would be a good time for him to claim his monthly retirement checks.

When Latsha logs on to her husband’s online account, a message reading “account has been suspended” comes up. When she calls Social Security’s 800 number, she typically waits on hold for about 45 minutes to an hour before she gives up.

“You call, and you’re on hold forever,” Latsha said. “For three weeks now, I’ve been trying to get in touch with them.” ...

 While the average wait time for Social Security’s 800 number was around 13.5 minutes in 2021, some months have had longer delays. In January, for example, the average wait was around 40 minutes. ...

Dorothy Pritchette, 48, a schoolteacher from Newport News, Virginia, has been unable to work since she had a stroke in August. She applied for disability benefits shortly thereafter. While the Social Security Administration website shows that the benefits have been approved, [she] has yet to receive a payment. ...

Seizure Of Social Security Benefits To Satisfy Student Loan Debt Suspended Until November

      From CNBC:

The U.S. Department of Education has suspended the seizure of tax refunds, Social Security and other government payments to satisfy defaulted student loans until November, the agency said.

About 9 million people have a federal student loan in default, which means they’ve fallen at least 270 days behind on payments.

     Why is it that the government has the power to seize Social Security benefits to collect on a student loan debt? We don't allow collection of other debts in this way. For that matter, why is it nearly impossible to discharge a student loan debt in bankruptcy? 

     I ask clients if they have outstanding student loan debts. I'd say that 90% have no student loan debt and are surprised at the question. The other 10% are surprised to find out that being disabled may have an effect on their student loans. It's like asking about disabled children. Most of my clients don't have disabled children so the question doesn't matter to them but for that minority of my clients who have disabled children, it matters a lot.

Slow Reaction Time

      On August 24, 2020 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in Maxwell v. Saul, 971 F.3d 1128, holding that coming up with two job titles to which a claimant could transfer skills isn't enough to support a finding of transferable skills. Since that time the agency has been thinking about what to do about the Maxwell decision. It's still thinking about whether to issue an Acquiescence Ruling but it's now told its staff to follow Maxwell in the 9th Circuit.

     I don't know whether to attribute this extraordinary delay to a sclerosed decision-making process or stubborness. Maybe they're both contributing factors.

Heavy Telework Usage At Social Security Compared To Other Agencies With Predictable Results

     From a recent report by the Government Accountability Office GAO:

 

Click on image to view full size

... The Social Security Administration (SSA), for example, reported that it faced challenges transitioning the work of its call center operators to a telework environment. According to SSA, nearly 4,000 of its customer call center agents did not telework prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. SSA explained that it was in the initial stages of replacing its telephone infrastructure at the onset of the pandemic and the transition to maximum telework required the agency to re-engineer the way it used current technology to provide all customer call center agents the ability to answer calls until its new agency-wide telephone system could be installed. When SSA transitioned to maximum telework in March 2020, the agency said it had enough equipment for only about one-third of these agents to perform their duties while teleworking.

SSA officials told us that call center agents without remote equipment were placed on administrative leave or weather and safety leave. Additionally, it took a couple of weeks for the agency to provide the customer call center agents on leave with the essential equipment that allowed them to telework. However, SSA officials reported that internet connectivity issues created challenges for employees receiving calls on its 800-customer service number. As a result, SSA operated with a limited number of employees available to respond to the 800 number calls from the public. This resulted in longer-than-normal call-wait times. SSA officials said that by June 2020, they had equipped employees with necessary technology to answer the increasing number of calls while teleworking.

SSA’s Office of the Inspector General reported that only 27 percent of teleservice center employees were answering calls on the national 800-number in mid-March of 2020. As of October 2020, according to the report, nearly all call center employees were answering calls, with approximately 1 percent on weather and safety leave who were unable to answer calls remotely due to internet connectivity issues. The report also stated that while SSA reduced the amount of callers receiving a busy message, this was partially enabled by reducing hours for the national 800-number. ...

What Does It Tell You If Less Than Half Of People File Their Social Security Retirement Claims Online?

      From a piece by Alicia Munnell, the director of the Boston College Center for Retirement Research for Market Watch:

The Social Security Administration faces an enormous challenge to maintain its services as retiring baby boomers increase the demand and budget constraints and retiring staff limit the agency’s capacity to deliver.  ...

To investigate how individuals claimed or intend to claim their retirement benefits, my colleague JP Aubry surveyed 2,600 people ages 57-70. The responses showed that, while 60% of respondents applied or intend to apply online (a somewhat higher share than the SSA data show), only 43% of respondents claim completely online — that is, without contacting SSA in-person or by phone. Scaling the survey results to the SSA data for online applications suggests that 37% of retirees claim completely online  ...

To better understand the factors associated with online claiming patterns, JP estimated a regression that relates respondents’ demographic characteristics to full online claiming (see Figure 3). Two of the characteristics most associated with claiming completely online are the use of online banking and Turbo Tax — both of which are proxies for a high level of comfort with online financial tools. Additionally, claiming completely online is associated with living in a metropolitan area, being college educated, and being married. On the other hand, the characteristics most associated with not claiming completely online are — essentially — being nonwhite. ...

In response to in-depth questioning, respondents identified four reasons for contacting an SSA representative: 1) complex issues that clearly require an SSA representative, such as discussing the specifics of spousal and survivor benefits; 2) general aversions to online services, like a concern about data privacy; 3) straightforward inquiries that could be addressed without contacting a representative, like checking the benefit amount and eligibility; and 4) obstacles to online claiming that could be remedied by SSA service improvements, such as fixing data errors.  ...

     Note that this piece concerns retirement claims, not the more complicated survivor claims, not to mention the vastly more complicated disability and SSI claims.

It Really Is A Struggle

     "NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with economy reporter Chabeli Carrazana from The 19th News about women whose spouses and children have died of COVID struggling to seek benefits from Social Security offices."