Anyone Still Wanting To Invest The Trust Funds In The Stock Market?

     Is there anyone out there who still wants to invest the Social Security trust funds in the stock market? Anyone? 'Fess up, right wing trolls. That was a terrible idea.

Improvement In 800 Number Service

     I don't know how they've done it but Social Security is reporting dramatic improvement this year in average speed to answer times and agent busy rates for their 800 number.

Oblique Response

     The Acting Commissioner of Social Security has sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee responding obliquely to his request for information about whether the agency would be providing names of claimants with representative payees to other government agencies for use in determining capacity to obtain firearms. The Acting Commissioner says that Social Security isn't doing that now. She does not say whether there is a plan to do so in the future although she does say that no names would be provided merely because a claimant has a representative payee.

About Time

     Social Security has now announced that it will recognize same sex marriages even before the date of the Supreme Court decision requiring that all states recognize same sex marriages. Just yesterday there was a New York Times article saying that the Department of Justice was still considering the issue.

Same Sex Marriages Still A Problem For Social Security

     From the New York Times:

Same-sex couples may have won marriage equality, but some gay and lesbian individuals have been left wondering if their unions are still less than equal in the eyes of the government.

Kathy Murphy is one of them. She has been unable to collect survivor and death benefits from Social Security since she lost her spouse, Sara Barker, to cancer in 2012. Ms. Murphy retired from her career in publishing in 2011, earlier than she expected, to care for Ms. Barker, who died at 62.

Ms. Murphy finds herself in this predicament largely because her spouse died before the Supreme Court’s monumental ruling in June, Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that marriage is a fundamental right. That case came after the landmark Windsor decision, in 2013, in which the court ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits. ...

A spokesman for the Social Security Administration said it was working with the Justice Department to analyze the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell. He said the agency would provide updated instructions as new information became available.

Use Of ERE Message Function

     By chance I noticed recently that I was the only one at my firm using the message function in Social Security's Electronic Records Express (ERE) system. I've been using it to send simple messages such as as “We have submitted all the evidence that we promised on the day of the hearing and you can proceed to issue a decision” or “The post-hearing CE strongly supports our argument that Mr. _____ is limited to sedentary work.” I've only been sending these messages to one hearing office. The process has been working well for me.
     After finding out that no one else at my firm was using the message function, I asked outside my firm. I couldn't find anyone else using the message function.
     I'm curious. Are attorneys in other states using the message function? Is it working OK if you are? If you're not using it, is it because you tried and there were problems? Were you even aware of the message function?
     If this technology isn't being used widely, there's something wrong. Either the system isn't functional or people just don't know about it.

Social Security Headcount Up From A Year Ago But Still Way Down From Peak

     The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has just posted updated figures for the number of employees at the Social Security Administration as of the end of the first quarter of 2015:

• March 2015 64,432
• 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

Early Intervention Contractor Sought

     Social Security is seeking a contractor for an early intervention mental health study. This would only be for denied applicants. The overwhelming majority of applicants for Social Security disability benefits who suffer from mental illness are denied.

Why Do So Many Republican Candidates For President Favor Cuts In Social Security?

     Today's opinion pieces:

• Paul Krugman at the New York Times believes most Republican candidates for President support cuts to Social Security not because these cuts are popular with the Republican base (they aren't) but because big money donors support cuts in Social Security.
• Tim Worstall at Forbes says that you don't have to be a bloated plutocrat to favor cuts in Social Security. In fact, retirement age should be raised to 80!
• Ezra Klein at Vox believes that one of the major reasons that Donald Trump is popular with Republican voters is that Trump doesn't favor cuts in Social Security.

Grim Processing Time Report

      From the newsletter (not available online) of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR). Click on the image of each page to view full size.

When It Comes To Age Of Retirement, Don't Believe What People Tell You

From EBRI -- Click On Image To See Full Size

They've Got Opinions And Some Facts

     Here's a roundup of today's columnist pieces on Social Security:

• Michael Hiltzik on the lack of a confirmed Commissioner of Social Security
• Tom Margenau on the Lump Sum Death Payment (LSDP)
• Laurence Kotlikoff and Robert Pozen on how the retirement earnings test for those between age 62 and full retirement age discourages people from working

House Appropriations Committee "Believes" In Functional Assessment Batteries

     From the report (page 150) of the House Appropriations Committee on the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill, which covers the Social Security Administration:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to create a functional assessment tool that is reliable and objective and may inform the disability determination process. One of the major projects of this partnership is the Functional Assessment Battery (FAB). The Committee believes the FAB tool could serve to provide uniform, objective evidence to the disability determination.The Committee notes its concern that SSA is currently limiting the use of this tool for only survey research. The Committee directs SSA to test the use of the FAB as part of the demonstrations undertaken within the Disability Early Intervention Initiative.

     The bill has now been reported out of Committee.
     The Committee can "believe" what it wants but any function assessment battery will be worthless in determining disability. You cannot test someone's work capacity over the course of a few hours and extrapolate from that to determine the person's ability to work eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year. You cannot say that because a person has run 100 yards that they can run a marathon, much less say that the person can run a marathon at the same pace that they have run 100 yards. There's no way around this problem.
     Functional assessment batteries have always been and will always be fool's gold. They appeal only to those who give little thought to the matter, especially if they have no interest in justice, and to those who stand to profit from performing the functional assessment batteries.
     The United Kingdom has started using functional assessment batteries in determining disability. It's been pretty disastrous.
     If you think disability determination in the United States is problematic, you'd right. Disability determination is an inherently messy, imprecise business. That doesn't mean that things can't be made worse. Things could get a lot worse with widespread use of functional assessment batteries.

Happy 80th Birthday, Social Security!

Survey On Having Enough Money To Live Comfortably In Retirement

From EBRI -- Click On Image To View Full Size

Eric Conn's Former Clients Awaiting Word From Federal Court

     There was a hearing Monday on a motion to prevent the Social Security Administration from forcing almost 1,500 former clients of Eric Conn to prove all over again that they're disabled. There's no decision yet from the Court but the attorney representing the class has posted about the hearing on Facebook. He says that he gave the judge his best estimate that only about a third of the claimants would be able to obtain legal representation. Training for volunteer attorneys is tentatively scheduled for August 29.

Some Right Wing Ideas On Reforming Social Security Disability

     The Washington Examiner, a right wing publication publication owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, has a compendium of ideas for reforming Social Security disability. Here are some:

• Add temporary disability benefits
• Add partial disability benefits
• Change the definition of disability to "a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that has resulted in a substantial impediment to employment and is expected to result in death or has lasted or is expected to last for continuous periods of at least 12 months."
• Early intervention to help disabled people to work such as providing career coaches.

     Those proposing these ideas do so because they actually believe that in the long run they would cut costs. They're dead wrong.

     I'd love to see the first three ideas implemented but they're complete non-starters. Temporary disability benefits would be extremely expensive to implement. Partial disability benefits would multiply costs by, who knows, three or four or five times. Changing the definition of disability to merely require a "substantial impediment to employment" would have a similar effect. Early intervention would be extremely difficult to implement and would be ineffective. People can't wrap their minds around the fact that most people who meet Social Security's current definition of disability either suffer from chronic, progressive conditions or suffer from overwhelming mental illness. Early intervention doesn't help them.

     The underlying problem is that no one on the right has a good understanding of Social Security disability. They have attitudes about Social Security disability. Boy, do they have attitudes! But when it comes to actual knowledge, they just don't know their stuff, which is how they come up with this blue sky stuff.

Astrue Not A Fan Of Obamacare

     I was wondering what Michael Astrue, the most recent Commissioner of Social Security, was up to. I found an opinion piece that he had done in May for The Weekly Standard, a right wing publication, on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which he and many others call Obamacare. I won't bore you with the details of Astrue's piece. I'll just list a few of the words he used and you can infer the rest:

• Self-preservation
• Waste
• Fraud
• Abuse
• Criminal
• Wreckage
• Massive
• Failure
• Mislead
• Stonewall
• Failures
• Reckless

     Astrue was a Massachusetts resident at the time that state implemented a health care plan devised by its Republican governor, Mitt Romney. Astrue was active in Massachusetts politics at the time. I can't find any record of him publicly criticizing Romney's plan. The Affordable Care Act was modeled after Romney's plan. It's no exaggeration to say that Obamacare is Romneycare writ large. If you hate the Affordable Care Act, you should have hated Romney's healthcare plan too.

Law Firm Agrees To Represent Several Hundred Former Clients Of Eric Conn

     Morgan and Morgan, a law firm, has agreed to represent "several hundred" of the nearly 1,500 former clients of Eric Conn who may be losing their Social Security disability benefits. Morgan and Morgan appears to be based in Florida but has offices in Kentucky.

New Regs On Social Security Number Applications

     The Social Security Administration has adopted new regulations on Social Security number applications to allow for electronic applications.