Fee Payment Data Released

Social Security has released the May 2006 data on payments to attorneys and others who represent claimants before the Social Security Administration. Fee payments in May 2006 were up 3% over April 2006 and 17% over May 2005.

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-06	18,752	$64,848,326.02
Feb-06	20,426	$70,312.586.15
Mar-06	26,227	$91,045,934.83
Apr-06	23,042	$79,714,961.76
May-06	23,581	$82,015,869.29

New Effort To Protect Privacy Of Social Security Records

The Social Security Administration has recently released a revised section of its Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) dealing with protecting the privacy of Social Security records. There are already reports that attorneys representing Social Security claimants are facing new difficulties in obtaining routine information from Social Security about their clients as a result of this change.

Social Security Bulletin Released

The May 2006 issue of the Social Security Bulletin has been released online. The following is a summary of its contents:

Military Veterans and Social Security
by Anya Olsen
About one out of every four adult Social Security beneficiaries has served in the United States military, making military veterans and their families an important group to study. This article provides information on the demographic characteristics of military veterans, including their age, sex, marital status, education, and race and ethnicity. It also examines their economic status by looking at poverty levels and Social Security benefit payments. Information is based on data from the March 2004 Current Population Survey, a large, nationally representative survey of U.S. households.

An Overview of the National Survey of SSI Children and Families and Related Products
by Paul S. Davies and Kalman Rupp
During the first three decades of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, the number of children receiving SSI because of a disability increased from 70,000 in 1974 to about 1 million at the end of 2005. With over 8,500 interviews completed between July 2001 and June 2002, the National Survey of SSI Children and Families (NSCF) is the first nationally representative survey since 1978 of noninstitutionalized children and young adults who were receiving SSI during the survey period or had formerly received SSI. The article discusses the objectives of the survey, its methodology and implementation, content of the questionnaire, a randomized response-incentive experiment, and related products including the release of a public-use data file.

A Profile of Children with Disabilities Receiving SSI: Highlights from the National Survey of SSI Children and Families
by Kalman Rupp, Paul S. Davies, Chad Newcomb, Howard Iams, Carrie Becker, Shanti Mulpuru, Stephen Ressler, Kathleen Romig, and Baylor Miller
This article, based on interviews from the National Survey of SSI Children and Families conducted between July 2001 and June 2002, presents a profile of children under the age of 18 who were receiving support from the Supplemental Security Income program. The topics highlighted provide information of SSI children with disabilities and their families not available from administrative records, including demographic characteristics, income and assets, perceived health and disabilities, and health care utilization. While virtually every child in the SSI program is covered by some form of health insurance, primarily Medicaid, the data indicate substantial heterogeneity on other variables. This is true on many different dimensions, such as the perceived severity of the child's disabling conditions, health care utilization and service needs, the presence of other family members with disabilities, family demographics, and access to non-SSI sources of incomes.

Participation in Programs Designed to Improve Employment Outcomes for Persons with Psychiatric Disabilities: Evidence from the New York WORKS Demonstration Project
by S. Antonio Ruiz-Quintanilla, Robert F. Weathers II, Valerie Melburg, Kimberly Campbell, and Nawaf Madi
This article examines a multistage recruitment process used to select Supplemental Security Income recipients with a psychiatric disorder to participate in a project designed to improve their employment outcomes. It uses an empirical method recently developed in the literature abut the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) to analyze the importance of individual characteristics on enrollment in the project. The results show that characteristics of SSI recipients have a different impact on enrollment at different points in the recruitment process. Results also point to ways that program administrators may improve recruitment strategies and participation for similar proje

cts.

SSI Claimants Who Work

Social Security's Office of Policy Data has issued a report on SSI disability benefits recipients who work. One lowlight of the report is that nationwide there are only 419 participants in the Program For Achieving Self-Support (PASS) program that is supposed to encourage return to work for SSI disability recipients. Social Security has made it extremely difficult to qualify a PASS plan. Here are the more positive highlights:

In December 2005, there were 336,570 SSI disabled beneficiaries who were working—5.6 percent of the total SSI disabled caseload. Included in this count were 78,205 section 1619(b) participants who do not receive an SSI payment but have special SSI recipient status for Medicaid purposes. Over four-fifths (81.9 percent) of the workers had amounts of earned income below the substantial gainful activity (SGA) level of $860 per month; 22.8 percent earned $65 or less.

Geographic Distribution

Among the states, the percentage of disabled workers varied from a low of 2.8 percent in Mississippi to a high of 18.5 percent in North Dakota. In general, the percentage of disabled workers was higher in the northern states than in the southern states.

Demographic Characteristics

The majority of these disabled workers were male (53.4 percent). Almost half (49.3 percent) had unearned income; 43.5 percent were receiving Social Security benefits. Comparable figures for all disabled recipients in December 2005 were 45.5 percent male, 38.2 percent with unearned income, and 30.6 percent receiving Social Security benefits.

Diagnosis

Disabled workers are more likely to have certain impairments than other disabled recipients. Almost two-thirds (66.2 percent) of the workers had a mental disorder, including 41.5 percent who were diagnosed with mental retardation. By comparison, 57.7 percent of all disabled recipients were diagnosed with a mental disorder, including 21.7 percent with mental retardation.

Upcoming Meetings and CLE

• June 5-7, 2006 NY Legal Assistance Statewide DAP Task Force Meeting, Albany, NY
  
• June 7-9, 2006 Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel, Quarterly Meeting, Arlington, VA
• July 10, 2006 National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives and Disability Law Center Disability Service Improvement Training, Boston, MA
  
• July 12, 2006 Social Security Advisory Board meeting, Washington, DC
  
• July 14, 2006 Minnesota Legal Services Coalition CLE, Somewhere in Minnesota, but the sponsor did not bother to give the information
  
• July 18, 2006 ATLA Social Security Disability Section and Health Care and Disability Litigation Group CLE program, Seattle, WA
• August 4-5, Philadelphia Regional Management Association Annual Meeting, Williamsburg, VA
  
• August 10-11, 2006 Retirement Research Consortium, Washington, DC
• August 11, 2006 8th Circuit Social Security CLE, Omaha, NE
• September 8, 2006 Louisiana State Bar CLE, New Orleans, LA
• september 11-13, 2006 NADE Regional Training Conference, Jefferson City, MO
  
• September 16-21, 2006 National Association of Disability Examiners, San Diego, CA
  
• October 11-14, 2006 National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) CLE, Phoenix, AZ
• October 16-19, 2006 National Council of Social Security Management Association Meeting, Milwaukee, WI
• May 20-23, 2007, National Association of Disability Examiners Meeting, Stowe, VE
  

If you know of others, please e-mail me.

OIG Report on Rep Payee Problems

A recent report of Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) indicates that there may be serious problems with benefits not being paid to claimants for extended periods of time while Social Security investigates whether a representative payee should be appointed to handle the claimants' benefits for them. The report states that:

As of September 2004, we estimate there were approximately 10,780 beneficiaries in suspended status pending the selection of a representative payee (see Appendix C). Based on a review of 539 of these beneficiaries, we estimate that approximately
• $4.6 million in benefits was improperly suspended and should have been paid directly to about 1,700 beneficiaries;
• $5.2 million in benefits payable to about 1,580 beneficiaries was not reinstated, as required, after 1 month; and
• $5.7 million in benefits was withheld from about 2,220 children under age 15 for an average of 252 days.
In addition, SSA could not locate 11 of the 539 beneficiaries who remained in suspended status pending the selection of a representative payee.

AFGE Protests Budget Cuts At SSA

Witold Skwiercznsxi, president of the National Council of Field Office Operations Locals of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a labor union that represents 28,000 Social Security employees, has issued a press release objecting to attempts to cut Social Security's operating budget.

Feedback on Tremolite

Mike Bliven of Montana disagreed with my suggestion that Social Security Ruling 06-01p on diseases associated with tremolite exposure would be of little consequence:

While I have great respect for you and your work in the field, I respectfully disagree with your blog of today’s date on SSR 06-01. I could not post a response to your blog, so I am sending you this email. While not a magic bullet, this SSR will be helpful to the Montana tremolite victims in their claims – or at least as helpful as any SSR could be. The SSA must still apply it and comply with the Regulations. I know because I represent many of these claimants. This SSR took into account input from the victims of the tremolite exposure, including Montana victims, their treating physicians and other sources, with much effort on the part of Senator Baucus and his staff who work on Social Security issues. The Commissioner’s recent “unpublicized” changes to the regulations, will not go into effect in this part of the country for years and I question how they would help these folks – with the exception of possibly speeding up part of the process by eliminating Reconsideration (which is a meaningless delay here for 87% of applicants). This SSR is in effect now and will be of immediate assistance in the consideration of the claims to those whom it applies if it is followed by Montana DDS, ALJs, and the Appeals Council (or whatever it becomes while it remains).