Americans Support Social Security

"When asked in a new Harris Poll how strongly they support 14 different government services, five services receive strong, or a fair amount of support, from about three-fourths of all adults or more. The five most popular services are The National Parks Service (85% support), Crime-fighting and prevention services (77%) Medicare (76%), Social Security (76%), and Unemployment benefits (74%)." PRNewswire

Good News on Christmas Day

Eric Schnaufer, a prominent Social Security attorney who had been hospitalized due to serious injuries, is scheduled for release from the hospital today.

Death Master File On DVD

Social Security's death master file is now available on DVD. This is SSA's official record of deaths reported to the agency. It is useful for fraud prevention and for genealogical research.

Medicare Problems After Release From Prison

A new addition to SSA's Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) alerts SSA employees to a problem with the data used by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) concerning prisoners. Because of computer problems, Medicare claims are being denied on the grounds that a person is incarcerated even after they have been released and SSA has been notified of the release. Apparently, the computers at SSA and CMS are not communicating with each other on prisoner releases.

Prominent Social Security Attorney Hospitalized

Eric Schnaufer, a prominent Social Security attorney, has suffered a serious injury. He is hospitalized at the Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Illinois. He was in intensive care, but has now been released to a regular room.

A Christmas Wish List

What I am wishing for in this Christmas season are answers to a few questions:

1. How long is it taking to get a Social Security hearing these days? Can anyone at SSA send me a list showing how long it is taking to get an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) hearing in each of the hearing offices? I think there are quite a few people who would be interested in this.
   
2. What happened to the results of the pilot projects that SSA did some years ago on eliminating the Appeals Council? It is no secret that such studies were done, yet SSA denies having any data produced by these projects. That is odd and surprising. It begs an explanation, yet SSA has not provided an explanation. There is great interest in what will happen when the Appeals Council is abolished, which is likely to start happening in 2006.
3. There have been some signs that SSA may be ready to enforce the requirement that approval be obtained before charging a fee for representing Social Security claimants even if the fee is paid for by the Long Term Disability (LTD) insurance company paying benefits to the claimant. Is SSA ready to bring charges? Are those representing LTD carriers changing the way they do business?

If you can help with my Christmas list, please e-mail me at charles@charleshallfirm.com.

Coal in the Stocking for SSI Claimants

The Senate voted today to pass the budget reconciliation bill according to this Washington Post article (may require registration). This bill would require staged payments of back SSI benefits that total more than three months of benefits at the full SSI rate. The budget reconciliation bill is not final. Some small changes were made in the Senate from the House of Representatives version of the bill. These changes do not affect SSI, but the bill must go back to the House of Representatives for final passage. That will not happen until after the Christmas recess, but it is unlikely now that anything could derail this bill.

Inspector General Gets Criminal Convictions

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a newsletter boasting of achieving a number of criminal convictions for Social Security fraud.