Committee Chairmen Ask For Ideas

     From a press release:

House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX), and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) today called on the disability community and other interested stakeholders to bring ideas to the table on how best to address the impending depletion of reserves in the Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund. The fund’s depletion has been projected to occur sometime late in 2016, requiring action to prevent across-the-board cuts to beneficiaries of the DI program.

“The Disability Insurance program needs fixing,” Ryan, Johnson, and Hatch said. “And while we’re working on solutions, we also want to hear from those outside Congress. Almost all American workers pay for the disability insurance program through their payroll taxes, and they deserve a program that protects those with disabilities, promotes opportunity, and ensures that hard-earned taxpayer dollars are used efficiently and don’t go to fraudsters. We especially want to hear from disability insurance beneficiaries on how we can improve the disability program together.”

The lawmakers are urging the public to take a more active role in developing how to improve the current program and ensure that benefits are there for future generations. Specifically, the lawmakers are soliciting input on:

1. Ways to make the DI program work better for current and future beneficiaries;
2. Ways to improve the financial outlook for the DI Trust Fund; and
3. Ways to promote opportunities for those trying to return to work.

Individuals, researchers, businesses, organizations, and advocacy groups interested in submitting comments should send an email to the following address: ImproveDI@mail.house.gov.

Is Disability "Attractively Lucrative"?

     From an op ed piece by Rosie Fletcher in the New Statesman, a British newspaper, written about proposed changes in social security disability benefits in her country:

Another day, another rummage down the back of the benefits sofa to find a spare £12bn. This week: changing Employment Support Allowance to incentivise ill people to get back to work. 

One problem: I already have the best incentive to stop being ill and get back to work. It’s called “being ill”. I would love to go back to work because if I were able to work, I would no longer be sick. Long-term illness nibbles away at your identity from the edges, taking out chunks of the things that make you you: the friends you meet, the shops you wander into, the job you do. 

I would love to work, if only because it would give me something to use in small talk, a context in which to place myself, the grit around which an imperfect pearl of who I am can begin to re-form.

I would like to have a job. I would like to feel productive. I would like to do more with my day than clutch at cups of tea and switch on the radio because I can’t keep my eyes open for the television. But currently I can’t and I rely on ESA to keep me in teabags. 

 This proposal makes two fundamental mistakes: that illness and disability are a) passive and b) attractively lucrative. ... 

 Disease isn’t like a gas meter. It has no notion of economics. It doesn’t switch off because you’ve stopped putting money in. This isn’t some kind of elaborate con I’ve been running, shutting myself away from the world to trick you out of the princely sum of £48 a week. Cutting my benefits won't get me back into work. It will make my life smaller, more stressful. It will make me sicker. ... 

 This isn’t just a question of economics, of ideological war on the welfare state. This is the insidious, callous notion that sick and disabled people are ultimately not trying hard enough. This says what people with chronic illnesses and disabilities hear all too much from their friends, from their families, from even their doctors: we do not believe that you are ill. ...

Social Security's "Very Aggressive" Goal: Answer The Phone In Less Than Twelve Minutes

     The most recent issue of the newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), a voluntary organization of Social Security management personnel, has an article on the agency's Teleservice Centers (TSCs). Some points from the piece:

• On June 10, 2014 Social Security's 800 number handled its One-Billionth call;
• As of June 2015, the TSCs had handled 49 million calls since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2014;
• The TSCs have a "very aggressive" goal of 700 seconds average speed of answer and 8% agent busy rate.

Number Drawing Disability Benefits Continues To Decline

     After being quite slow in getting out the May disability data, Social Security has rushed out the June numbers. For the eight time in the last nine months, the number of people drawing Disability Insurance Benefits from the Social Security Administration has declined. This is not some minor anomaly. The number drawing benefits at the end of June 2015 is below what it was at the end of June 2014. No one predicted this but it's happening. Given the dramatic decrease in the number of disability claims filed, the number drawing benefits is likely to continue to decline for an extended period of time.

House Ways And Means Committee Schedules Hearing On Promoting Work Opportunities For The Disabled

     The House Ways and Means Committee has announced that a hearing will be held on Thursday, July 9 at 10:00 a.m. on promoting work opportunities for Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries. 

     I wonder what it would come to if someone counted up the number of hearings this Committee or its Social Security Subcommittee has held on this topic over the decades. I bet it would average at least one a year for the last 50 years.

Senator Lankford Has A Plan

     Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has written a piece for The Hill about Social Security disability. Here are a few excerpts:

In May, over a thousand West Virginians and Kentuckians went to their mailbox and found letters telling them their disability checks would soon be cut off. 

Why? Because a government watchdog group had reason to believe that yet another lawyer and/or doctor was involved in Social Security fraud.  ...

It is time for a major overhaul of the disability system and a renewed focus on the disabled. Before the SSDI program goes insolvent in 2016, there are things that Congress and the Social Security Administration can do to protect the program for those who rely on it and the taxpayers who fund it.

A step in the right direction would include preventing individuals from receiving checks for the earned income tax credit or unemployment benefits and Social Security disability in the same year. ...

The “vocational grid” that defines which jobs are available in America has not been updated since the mid 1970s. Obviously, a few things have changed in the American economy since the ’70s, but the definition of employment used for disability has not changed. 

Many of these are potentially productive citizens who may have an additional challenge to employment, but they are not incapable of work.

Currently, disability attorneys are paid by Social Security offices around the country, not by the individuals who hire them. Disability attorneys take a portion of the disabled person’s check from them if they win the case, but the federal government is tasked to extract that fee from each individual and become the third party to every disability legal contract.

Why not allow the person who hired the attorney and signed the contract to also pay the bill? 

The incentive for the attorneys is to delay the case as long as possible, so their payment can extract the maximum amount from the disabled person’s check at the end. 

No law or regulation prevents a lawyer acting on behalf of a claimant from delaying a hearing by introducing new evidence moments before the hearing begins, effectively forcing the judge to put off the hearing. This prevents the claimant from getting benefits to which he or she may be entitled, but it ensures a bigger paycheck for the lawyer. That’s not how it works in a regular court, and that’s not how it should work for SSDI. ...

Social Security Now Recognizing Same Sex Marriages Nationwide

     I wondered how long it would take  the Social Security Administration to consult with the Department of Justice about the Obergefell decision before it fully recognized same sex marriages. It turns out that it took a little over a week. The agency is now fully recognizing same sex marriages, at least as of the date that each state started recognizing same sex marriages. 

     There are still issues about back benefits. If Texas, for instance, wasn't recognizing out of state same sex marriages until the Obergefell decision, is it still appropriate to deny claims for benefits based upon out of state same sex marriages for persons living in Texas for the time period before Obergefell? I expect that there's going to be litigation on this issue. Fortunately, it's a minor matter, affecting only back benefits for only a few people.

Wasting Money Trying To Collect Low-Dollar SSI Overpayments

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

Generally, SSA [Social Security Administration] attempted to collect overpayments regardless of the amount. ... 

SSA collects data on the average costs to collect RSI [Retirement and Survivors Insurance], DI [Disability Insurance], and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] overpayments via its Cost Analysis System ( CAS ). ... However, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment as reported in CAS represents the cost of a single action taken to collect an SSI overpayment during a FY [Fiscal Year]. Therefore, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment does not represent the cost of collecting the overpayment when multiple actions are required. This results in an understatement of the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment when multiple collection actions are required. ... 

Based on our analysis using average cost data from CAS, we estimated SSA spent over $323 million to collect low-dollar overpayments in FYs 2008 through 2013. Using SSA’s overpayment collection percentages for these FYs, we estimated SSA collected approximately $109.4 million of the low-dollar overpayments. This resulted in SSA spending over $213.6 million more than it collected ....

Attorney Fee Payments Continue To Decline

     Through June of this year, fees paid to attorneys and some others for representing Social Security claimants totaled $561 million. This is a 5% decline from the $588 million paid during the same period last year.

Happy 4th Of July

Eric Conn's Social Security Practice Fading Away

     Eric Conn hasn't been prosecuted and he is still allowed to practice before the Social Security Administration but it sounds like his law practice has taken quite a hit. The Louisville Courier-Journal says that "Conn has closed satellite offices in Ashland as well as in Beverly Hills, Calif., and San Francisco. The giant sign that towers over his office is literally fading, and on a recent weekday his overflow parking lots and waiting room were empty."

Davy Crockett Has A Question

     From WKRN in Nashville, TN:

During a question and answer session with Barack Obama Wednesday a Tennessee man asked the president if there was anything he could do to help him after his social security had been denied several times.

After telling President Obama that Davy Crockett was in fact his real name, the Tennessee resident whose social security has been denied four times asked, “Is there anything you can do to push it through, or something?”

The president responded by promising he would help get the answers to his question. See pictures from President Obama’s visit here.

 “I don’t run the Social Security Office, but if I ask a question, I tend to get an answer pretty quick,” President Obama said. “So what we’re going to do is we’re going to get your information Davey and I’ll make sure the Social Security Administration takes a look at it and expedites it.”

Social Security Headcount Increased In Late 2014

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has finally posted updated figures for the number of employees at the Social Security Administration at the end of 2014:

• December 2014 65,430
• September 2014 64,684
• June 2014 62,651
• March 2014 60,820
• December 2013 61,957
• September 2013 62,543
• June 2013 62,877
• March 2013 63,777
• December 2012 64,538
• September 2012 65,113
• September 2011 67,136
• December 2010 70,270
• December 2009 67,486
• September 2009 67,632
• December 2008 63,733
• September 2008 63,990
• September 2007 62,407
• September 2006 63,647
• September 2005 66,147
• September 2004 65,258
• September 2003 64,903
• September 2002 64,648
• September 2001 65,377
• September 2000 64,521

Fewer People Drawing Disability Benefits

     The Social Security Administration has finally released updated numbers for May on the number of people drawing Disability Insurance Benefits. The decline was tiny but the number drawing disability benefits went down in May. In seven of the last eight months the number drawing these benefits has declined.

Social Security Still Has To Consult With DOJ On Same Sex Marriages

     Despite the Supreme Court's decision that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the Social Security Administration still isn't ready to treat all partners to same sex marriages the same as partners to heterosexual marriages. They're going to be "working with the Department of Justice" before issuing instructions. What's the over/under on this? A month?

Customer Satisfaction At Social Security: Average By Federal Government Standards; Deficient By Private Sector Standards

From a Federal Times report. ACSI stands for American Customer Satisfaction Index

Same Sex Marriage And Social Security

     The Supreme Court's decision that there is a constitutional right to same sex marriage mostly settles the issue as far as Social Security is concerned. However, there may still be a few issues. Social Security has deferred decisions on most claims based upon same sex marriages. Those can now be processed. However, I suspect that some claims based upon same sex marriages were denied in the past. There may still be issues about back benefits in these cases. I expect that Social Security management is happy that this issue is being put to rest.

Not Keeping Up

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

4% Error Rate In Computing SSI Attorney Fees

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

For the 250 randomly sampled Title XVI claims involving claimant representative fees, SSA withheld fee s from claimants’ past-due benefits and paid the fees directly to the claimant representative. However, our review found that SSA did not always pay the appropriate amount when it paid the claimant representative fee on concurrent Title II and XVI claims. As a result, when SSA overpaid the claimant representative, it generally underpaid the claimant. Similarly, when SSA underpaid the claimant representative, it generally overpaid the claimant. 

Of the 250 sample claimant representative fees, 10 (4 percent) had claimant fee payment errors totaling $13,020: $12,479 in overpayments and $541 in underpayments. The payments ranged from a $3,062 overpayment to a $484 underpayment. Based on our results, we estimate that 15,200 claimant representative fee payments had about $19.8 million in payment errors for Calendar Years 2011 and 2012.

We acknowledge that computing past-due benefits and the related claimant representative fees may be complex, as staff is required to analyze a multitude of factors and make various decisions to pay the past-due benefits and fee. ...

Shouldn't They Ask What The Claimants Want?

     I find Larry Kotlikoff's pieces on Social Security to be ridiculously sensationalized. I rarely link to them. However, even though he's hyping this one too much, I still think he's onto something:

Despite our best efforts, we continue to be shocked by new horror stories about the Social Security Administration (SSA) that our readers bring to our attention. The latest galling example is one of the worst we've ever seen, and involves how the agency decides what to do when someone wants to defer benefits. 

Readers of our book know that we are big believers in delaying benefits where possible. If someone delays claiming their retirement benefit until it reaches its maximum value at age 70, their monthly benefit will be 76-percent higher — in inflation-adjusted terms — than if they claim at age 62, which is the earliest age at which normal retirement benefits may be taken. 

 Now, we've just learned, to our amazement, that Social Security is denying the delayed benefit wishes of some applicants and is instead forcing them to accept six months of retroactive benefits and a lifetime of lower benefits thereafter. Some beneficiaries may not even be aware that this is being done to them. This is a colossal injustice. ...
 Say someone comes in to their local Social Security office a few months shy of their 70th birthday and, as we're all told to do, gives the agency a head's up on their filing intentions....

 Instead of accepting their application for benefits to begin at age 70, the agency's representative instead gives the person a six-month retroactive payment! This act resets the person's entitlement back to what it was six months prior and wipes out half a year of Delayed Retirement Credits (DRCs). ...

We brought this to the attention of Jerry Lutz, the former Social Security technical expert who has reviewed nearly everything Larry has ever written about Social Security. Jerry consulted the SSA operations manual that sets forth agency policies and came back as amazed as we were.

"Based on SSA regulations, retroactivity is automatically applied to applications filed after FRA unless retroactivity is expressly restricted by the claimant," he wrote.