Boston.com Business reports that Massaschusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Colorado, Utah, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, and South Dakota all reduce state unemployment insurance benefits if a claimant is receiving Social Security benefits. Another state, Ohio, denies unemployment benefits altogether to those on Social Security benefits. The American Association of Retired People (AARP) has started lobbying these states to change their laws.
Jan 15, 2006
Jan 14, 2006
Serious Social Security Fraud
The vast majority of the Social Security fraud prosecutions are minor league affairs, with little threat of real jail time, but there are exceptions. The Herald of Rock Hill, SC reports that a jail guard in Chester County, SC has drawn a twenty month sentence for bribing an employee of a Georgia SSA office to supply blank Social Security cards which were then sold to undocumented aliens for $1,000 each. Apparently, the charges against the SSA employee have not yet been resolved.
Jan 13, 2006
Institute of Medicine Study Interim Report
Social Security has given the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences a contract to study SSA's listings of impairments and access to medical expertise. The final report is not due until later this year, but, at SSA's request, the Committee conducting the study has issued an interim report. The interim report is like most such consultant reports -- full of vague, meaningless exhortations to do better. It is also like most such reports in being somewhat self-serving. It is a report prepared by physicians which makes the surprising recommendation that more money be paid to physicians working for SSA and state agencies and to physicians preforming consultative examinations. This is undoubtedly well justified, but hardly a surprise. One would still like some new idea from this panel and there is certainly none in this interim report, nor is there any recommendation that has much real hope of meaningful implementation of what has been recommended.
Arthur Hess Dies
Arthur Hess, former Deputy Commissioner of Social Security, died on November 15, 2005 at his home in Charlottesville, VA. His passing has attracted almost no attention, which is a shame. Hess was 89. He came to work for SSA in 1939 and stayed with the agency until his retirement in 1974. He was a major part of the founding generation of Social Security employees who created most of what remains good about SSA. See this article prepared by the National Academy of Social Insurance on Hess's life. Hess was the first Medicare director, when Medicare was still part of SSA. The Health Care Financing Administration, which took over Medicare, and which is now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had an Oral History program which interviewed Hess in 1996. The transcript of that interview is good reading for anyone interested in the history of the Social Security Administration, and particularly for anyone interested in the history of disability benefits at SSA, since Hess may have been more responsible than anyone for setting up the disability program at SSA.
Curiously enough, even in 1996 Hess was critical of Social Security staffing, saying "the organization has now been ratcheted down to the point where it hasn't got even enough people to do the job it has to do. There are no people that you can pull from any place in Social Security to take on a new function without hurting existing functions." This may be a lesson that SSA is learning all over again with the introduction of Medicare Part D.
Curiously enough, even in 1996 Hess was critical of Social Security staffing, saying "the organization has now been ratcheted down to the point where it hasn't got even enough people to do the job it has to do. There are no people that you can pull from any place in Social Security to take on a new function without hurting existing functions." This may be a lesson that SSA is learning all over again with the introduction of Medicare Part D.
Clown Caught in Social Security Fraud in Montana
Roland Clown of Busby, MO pleaded guilty to defrauding Social Security of $50,000 in disability benefits, according to the Billings Gazette, and was sentenced to six months of home confinement and probation.
New Cardiovascular Listings
Today's Federal Register includes new final regulations changing SSA's cardiovascular listings. The new listings go into effect on April 13, 2006. At first look, the new regulations do not seem controversial. The new listings do carry forward with the recent trend towards longer and longer preambles to each listing section. If this process continues, the entire listings may eventually be over a hundred pages in length.
Jan 12, 2006
Tennessee Approves Specialization in Social Security Disability Law
Edwin Anderson has posted on the CONNECT Board that the Tennesssee Supreme Court has approved certification of specialists in Social Security Disability Law. Tennessee joins North Carolina as the only two states to approve certification of specialists in this field. The first specialists will be certified in North Carolina in late 2006.
Fee Payments in 2006
Social Security has posted the following final figures for 2005 on payments of fees to attorneys and others approved for direct payment of fees for representing Social Security claimants:
Fee Payments
Month/Year Volume Amount Beginning July 28, 2005, fee payments also include payments made to eligible non-attorneys participating in the demonstration project authorized by section 303 of the Social Security Protection Act of 2004 (Pub. L. 108-203).
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