Purely Coincidental -- Would Have Happened Anyway

     Woman applies for Social Security disability benefits. After more than a year there's still no determination on her claim. She contacts a newspaper reporter who sends an e-mail to Social Security on a Friday inquiring about the case. The following Monday the woman gets a call from Social Security saying her claim had been approved.

    By the way, Social Security doesn't normally call you to tell you that your disability claim has been approved unless there's an SSI claim involved and the description in the article of the woman's family income suggests that there wasn't an SSI claim involved.

Time Off For Voting A Problem At SSA?

     From Government Executive:

Several agencies are ignoring or putting tight restrictions on the Biden administration’s directive to provide extra time off for employees to vote or work at the polls, according to dozens of workers, the union representing them and internal policies reviewed by Government Executive.  ...

To qualify for the bonus leave, GPO said, employees must be unable to vote due to work duties—such as due to work-related travel—and not have access to absentee voting. Early voting options must also be the same hours as normal election day hours to remain eligible for the time off. If an employee can vote on alternative days earlier in the morning or later at night than is available on Nov. 8, GPO would not provide administrative leave. ...

[A]gencies that employees flagged as non-receptive to leave-for-voting requests included the Veterans Affairs Department, Transportation Security Administration, Social Security Administration and Defense Department. ...

Can This Business Survive?

    From the Messenger Inquirer:

Will Craig retired from the Social Security Administration in December after 25 years.

He said he’s seen the problems people have in filing claims and appeals.

So Craig has started The Social Security Advisor, a business “where I can help people seeking guidance with Social Security-related issues, such as help with completing complex forms, filing appeals or just help filing their applications,” he said. “I’ve see how everything works. I can’t file claims, but I can help people fill them out correctly.”

Craig said when he worked at Social Security, “I had to get people in and out in 10 minutes. Often they said they wished they had more time to talk with me.”...

Craig charges $50 an hour for his services. ...

Craig’s website says, “People often feel that they don’t need an attorney to qualify for Social Security disability, but might still need help completing the piles of forms and questionnaires that the Disability Determination Service can send. Have you tried calling your local Social Security office to see if they can help? Most likely they told you that there is no one available or that you should seek help from a friend or family member. With 25 years of experience working for the Social Security Administration, I’ve assisted people just like you fill out those forms.”

    I wish Mr. Craig all the best with his new business. I think this sort of service is needed. However, I think that Social Security is going to effectively shut it down by insisting on a fee petition for each fee he receives from a customer and that all monies he receives be held in escrow until a fee is approved. I have to say that this sort of thing -- where help is provided a Social Security claimant but there is no direct contact with Social Security -- has always been a gray area. I can't be entirely sure that Social Security will try to shut him down. I think it would not be in the public interest for them to shut him down. Why shouldn't it be legal to provide this sort of service if there's a demand for it? By the way, don't tell me that insisting that he file a fee petition to get paid isn't the same thing as shutting him down. Anyone who says that doesn't know how slow and tedious the fee petition process is. He would expend more effort filing fee petitions and following up on them than he would helping customers.

They Don’t Know How Much They Don’t Know

     Americans know so little about Social Security in general and about Social Security disability benefit in particular. According to new research, 24% of Americans don’t realize that there is such a thing as Social Security disability benefits. 7% don’t realize that you need to apply in order to be approved for those benefits. Yes, I have clients who have a hard time understanding that they won’t have a chance at being approved for Social Security disability unless they apply.

Please Read Before Commenting On This Blog

     I don't know why but there seem to be more and more comments posted on this blog. I think it may be a good idea to discuss the way that comments are handled here.

     Any comments you make on this board are moderated by me. They don't appear until I approve them. I approve comments one by one. Lately I have been deleting more comments. I don't think that's because my standards have changed. It's because the comments have changed. There are more objectionable comments offered. 

    I don't have any comprehensive list of standards for comments but let me list some that will get your comment trashed:

• Comment has no relevance to what I posted.
• Comment has only tangential relevance to what I posted. (There's a lot of subjectivity here. How tangential is too tangential?)
• The comment is repetitive. (Sometimes people repeat their comment merely because the fact that it didn't immediately appear confused them. Often, multiple comments seem to come from paid shills and, yes, it's obvious to me that this blog is targeted by paid shills. I try to knock them all out.)
  
• The comment seems intended to be insulting. (Some subjectivity here but there are way too many really insulting comments offered. I offer more leniency when we're talking about public officials.)
  
• The comment seems intended to troll. (Some subjectivity here.)
  
• The comment contains a clearly false and misleading statement of fact. (I few of these are honest errors but there are too many attempts to offer "alternative facts.")
  

    Remember, this is my blog. It's not a democracy. I get to be an autocrat. I can turn my thumb up or down on comments as I please. My purpose is to promote a useful and civil dialog. I certainly allow comments that express disagreement with me or which say my facts are wrong but I don't allow comments that are intended to insult me or anyone else or comments which appear to be deliberate lies.

    By the way, remember that I have to get around to reviewing your comment before it appears. This may happen quickly or it may take hours. It depends on my schedule. 

      Judging by what I have to throw out, I'd guess that most of my readers would prefer that the comments be moderated.

You Snooze, You Lose

    From Bloomberg:

An attorney who won disability insurance benefits for his client isn’t entitled to the fees the Social Security Administration designated for his work before a federal court, because his 26-month delay in requesting them wasn’t reasonable, the First Circuit said.

Jose Pais was denied benefits by the SSA in 2014. In 2018, a federal district court ruled in Pais’ favor and remanded the case to the SSA, which then decided Pais was entitled to benefits.

Pais and his lawyer had signed a contingent-fee agreement. The SSA therefore sent Pais a notice of award in June 2019, saying that his lawyer was entitled under federal law to fees of up to $29,159, representing 25% of the recovered benefits.

The lawyer promptly submitted a claim to SSA for over $7,000 for the work he did in administrative proceedings, but didn’t submit a claim for his work before the district court until August 2021.   

The district court rejected the lawyer’s excuses and said that the delay was unreasonable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b).

There is not fixed time under the Social Security law for an attorney to file a motion for fees, the opinion by Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said. But there is a circuit split over which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure applies to the request, Thompson said.

The Tenth Circuit applies Rule 60, under which parties have a “reasonable time” to move for “relief from a final judgment, order, or proceeding.” But the Second, Third, Fifth, and Eleventh circuits apply Rule 54(d)(2), which says that unless a statute or court order says otherwise, a motion for attorneys’ fees must “be filed no later than 14 days after the entry of judgment.”

Agreeing with the Tenth Circuit, the First Circuit said that the SSA never hands down a notice of award within 14 days of a district court’s judgment, which makes rigid application of Rule 54(d)(2) impossible. It also noted that some of the circuits that apply Rule 54(d)(2) toll the 14 days to the date the SSA issues a notice of award. ...

    What I want to know is how long it took Social Security to act on the fee petition. This delay may not be as bad as it seems.

It Would Be Suicidal For The GOP To Actually Try To Do This But That's Not Stopping Them From Talking About It

     From the New York Times:

Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs. ...

The Republican leaders who would decide what legislation the House and the Senate would consider if their party won control of Congress have not said specifically what, if anything, they would do to the programs. ...

Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. ...

ALJ Fee Petition Cap Increasing To $12,000

     From the Social Security Administration:

We previously announced an upcoming increase to the maximum fee under the fee agreement process, the first increase in 13 years. Effective November 30, 2022, the maximum fee will change from $6,000 to $7,200.

Additionally, on November 30, 2022, we are also increasing the fee petition amount that an initial authorizer may approve if an appointed representative seeks authorization of a fee through the fee petition process. During the fee petition process, the initial authorizer may now approve up to $12,000 in connection with a claim adjudicated at the initial, reconsideration, or hearing level. ...

Halloween 2022

 

Far More Poverty Among Disabled People In U.S. Than In Other Developed Countries

 

From the OECD. Click on image to view full size

Seven Years To Correct Mistake

    I just received a $436.88 attorney fee in a case that was approved in November 2015. The fee had been miscomputed originally. We notified the payment center of the problem at that time. They agreed that there was a problem. It's taken them seven years to correct the problem. Seven years.

    In case you're wondering (or trying to find some way to blame me for the delay) the case involved Disability Insurance Benefits, Disabled Adult Child Benefits and Supplemental Security Income benefits, meaning that benefits were computed in three locations, meaning that the chances of everything being computed correctly were low. Actually, a mispayment that only affected attorney fees is about as good as you could hope for, although you would hope it would take less than seven years to correct the mistake.

Union Decries Micromanagement

    From Government Executive:

Members of the nation’s largest federal employee union on Wednesday rallied outside of the headquarters of the Social Security Administration near Baltimore, demanding more funding and staffing for the agency, as well as reform of agency leadership and workforce policies. ...

Union officials on Wednesday described an agency in a vicious cycle, where insufficient funding amid growing workloads has led managers to micromanage overworked and underpaid employees, burning them out until they quit, further increasing the output expectations on the dwindling workforce that remains. This is exacerbated, they said, by a refusal to act to modernize the agency’s workflows or provide workplace flexibilities that have become the norm not just in the private sector, but elsewhere in the federal government. ...

According to a survey of union members commissioned by AFGE Council 220, 43% of respondents reported that they were planning to leave the agency within the next 12 months, including 26% of respondents who said they were strongly considering it. And 76% of respondents said that the volume of their workload is an impairment to their ability to perform their duties. ...

Delay Even For A Terminally Ill Claimant

       From KALB in Cottonport, LA:

Hundreds of thousands of people applying for Social Security Disability benefits are having to wait up to 10 months to hear back on the status of their application. That wait is wasting time and money for families dealing with health concerns that could ultimately be the difference between life and death.

Dr. Peter Lemoine, an attorney specializing in Social Security Disability law, said he fears that number will only double given the lack of manpower and efficiency in the Social Security Administration. One of his clients, Jalisa Johnson, is a 33-year-old single mother of four children battling stage four colon cancer. Lemoine said an application for disability benefits was sent out back in March, for a family in desperate need of financial and medical support. They have yet to receive an update and yet to receive thousands of dollars worth of assistance. ...

Johnson was placed on hospice over a month and a half ago in her fight against cancer. While still waiting for her approval from social security, many community members have helped raise money for her and her children. ...

    I had posted about this earlier on Twitter. Immediately I received replies that tried to place the blame for the delay on the attorney. That's ridiculous. There's no reason to suspect that the attorney failed in any way. 

    I've recently had a case of a terminally ill client whose case was pending at the reconsideration level. We kept calling about it and were eventually told that the problem was that the claimant hadn't returned his work history report! In case you don't know, that's absurd. That form is unnecessary when the claimant is dying. By the way, we don't intentionally take on cases of terminally ill claimants. We tell them that they won't need us. In the case I've talked about the diagnosis of terminal cancer came after we took on the case.

Hardly A Surprise But Really Dumb

    From the Washington Post:

Two senior Social Security officials who exposed massive, unprecedented fines imposed on disabled and poor elderly people — prompting multiple inquiries and halting the practice — now say they’ve faced ongoing backlash from their supervisors for speaking out.

Joscelyn Funnié and Deborah Shaw, veteran attorneys in the Social Security Administration’s inspector general’s office, were removed from their jobs and placed on paid leave after expressing concerns about the fines, then eventually reinstated.

But since returning to work under Inspector General Gail Ennis, they said they have been excluded from meaningful assignments, given tasks below their experience and abilities, shut out of meetings and collaboration with colleagues, and denied opportunities for advancement. Their claims are echoed in contemporaneous emails with management officials and backed up by two senior officials familiar with their work climate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. ...

    How could OIG leadership not foresee that retaliation would draw further negative publicity? By this point, I may be more concerned that OIG leadership lacks common sense than anything else.

More COLA Numbers

     Social Security has published its complete Cost Of Living Adjustments. There's more than individual COLA adjustments to be computed. Here's some key numbers for 2023:

• Attorney user fee: $113
• FICA wage base: $160,200
• Quarter of coverage amount: $1,640
• Substantial gainful activity amount (non-blind): $1,470
• Trial work period threshold: $1,050
  

Union Seeks Additional Funding For SSA

     From Federal News Network:

Social Security Administration employees are back in the office, but understaffing and a restrictive telework policy are making them less productive, according to one of its unions, and may lead to an exodus of more employees.

The American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents SSA employees who work in field offices and teleservice centers, is asking Congress for $16.5 billion in “emergency funding” to support SSA for the rest of fiscal 2023. ...

Sherry Jackson, AFGE Council 220’s second vice president and legislative action coordinator, said during a virtual town hall Thursday that SSA is running with 4,000 fewer field office and teleservice center employees than it did 12 years ago. ...

The emergency funding request amounts to a $1.7 billion increase above the Biden administration’s fiscal 2023 budget request for SSA. Congress passed a continuing resolution that lasts through Dec. 16 and is still working out a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of FY 2023. ...

Covid And Retirement

      From How Does COVID-Induced Early Retirement Compare to the Great Recession?, a study by Anqi Chen, Siyan Liu, and Alicia H. Munnell for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College:

The paper found that:

• Self-reported poor health did not lead to increased claiming during COVID, a story consistent with the Great Recession. 
• The booming stock market associated with COVID induced early claiming among those with retirement assets, a stark difference from the Great Recession where workers remained to replenish depleted balances. 
• On the other hand, generous UI benefits reduced early claiming for workers in the two lowest earnings terciles, a stark difference from the Great Recession where the lower paid continued to retire earlier than the well paid. 
• In the end, and in contrast to the Great Recession, the competing effects more than canceled each other out and resulted in an actual decrease in early claiming during the COVID Recession and slightly higher monthly Social Security benefits.

Coming In From The Cold

     From some television station in Indianapolis:

“It’s insanity.” Stephanie Curbeaux was fed up. She was cold from spending the better part of two hours on Wednesday morning standing in a line outside the Social Security office in northwest Indianapolis. The temperature was in the mid-30s. But Curbeaux stood there, needing to get her name changed with the agency.

“I got divorced. I’ve been needing to get it changed. They wanted me to mail my official documents which I wasn’t going to do.” And now that they’re open. This is the third I’ve been up here. God, it just makes me so mad.”

Two placed behind Curbeaux in the line was Susan Taylor, who is recently widowed.

“My husband passed away and I’m here to collect the benefits, as his widow. They won’t make appointments online. Even when I call to make an appointment, they won’t allow you to make an appointment. So, I have to just stand in line in the cold.”

Another two placed behind Taylor was a woman holding a place in line for a friend. Gabriel James says his spinal pain is so bad the longest he can stand at one time is five minutes. ...

We checked back in this morning when the office opened and an interesting thing happened. 36 people were allowed to walk through the door. The line which had been a persistent presence outside the building disappeared. The line did not reappear when checked throughout the day.

False Claims Lawsuit Over CEs

     From KSHB:

When additional medical evidence is needed to approve a disability benefits application with the Social Security Administration, the agency requires applicants to get a consultative exam with a doctor.

In the Kansas City region, Midwest CES is one of several contractors working with the government to provide the exams.

Shiron Norah visited one of Midwest CES’s locations in 2018 during her application process. The lifelong Kansas Citian says she can no longer work because of a series of ailments, including carpel tunnel in both wrists, hip surgery, pain in her neck and back, constant migraines and arthritis.    

Norah said the doctor at Midwest CES spent less than 10 minutes with her and did not ask her a single question. The doctor’s report cited Norah’s ability to “use her fingers and hands to button and unbutton a shirt,” but Norah says she was not wearing a shirt with buttons during her exam. ...

Kyle Sciolaro, an attorney at BurnettDriskill, says he’s found roughly 250 other people in Norah’s shoes. They visited Midwest CES for a consultative exam and subsequent reports had similar language about buttoning their clothing or turning doorknobs - even though the exam rooms at Midwest CES’ North Kansas City office doesn’t have doorknobs.

In a series of civil lawsuits against the Social Security Administration, Midwest CES and doctors conducting exams, Sciolaro and his team allege fraud. ...

A lawsuit under the False Claims Act allows BurnettDriskill to file a case on behalf of the United States and its taxpayers. It alleges the Midwest CES knowingly submitted false information for payment. ...

President of Midwest CES Jake Johnsen responded to the claims. He calls the exams his company completes “a critical service” that helps prevent fraud. Johnsen pointed out Midwest CES does not know which results will lead to approval or denial of a claim. The government pays contractors like Midwest CES the same whether an applicant qualifies for benefits or not. ...

Self-Selection Of Sex

     From a press release:

Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, announced that the agency now offers people the choice to self-select their sex on their Social Security number (SSN) record. The agency has implemented this policy change and the new option is now available. ...

People who update their sex marker in Social Security’s records will need to apply for a replacement SSN card. They will still need to show a current document to prove their identity, but they will no longer need to provide medical or legal documentation of their sex designation now that the policy change is in place.

The agency will accept the applicant’s self-identified sex designation of either male or female, even if it is different from the sex designation shown on identity documents, such as a passport or state-issued driver’s license or identity card. SSN cards do not include sex markers. Currently, Social Security’s record systems are unable to include a non-binary or unspecified sex designation. The agency is exploring possible future policy and systems updates to support an “X” sex designation for the SSN card application process. ...

    It doesn't matter to the Social Security Administration what a person's gender identity might be. The Social Security Act is gender neutral. Wherever there's a wife's benefit, there's a husband's benefit. Wherever there's a widow's benefit, there's a widower's benefit. There's really no need for the Social Security Administration to even record gender. It's a relic from more than 40 years ago when the Social Security Act was not gender neutral.