The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an association of employees of state disability determination agercies, has issued its Spring 2006 newsletter. The newsletter contains an interesting quote from Ruby Burrell, Associate Commissioner for Disability Determination: "In each region, overall DDS replacement rate will be 3 for every 4 employees lost. In contrast, the SSA Field offices will only be able to replace at a 1 for 3 rate while some of the other components within SSA will replace at a rate of 1 for every 5 employees lost." Burrell went on to state that Social Security's goal is to hold the backlog at the initial level to where it is at the moment, rather than to make any improvement. Merely holding the current level will be difficult with ongoing staff cuts at the same time as the workload is increasing. Burrell also stated that Social Security's goal is to have all states "independence day" certified by the end of calendar year 2006. "Independence day" means that the state agency is able to process all cases using Social Security's paperless EDIB system.
Jun 8, 2006
Jun 7, 2006
Serious Social Security Payment Problems Due To Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
From the Tampa Tribune:
More than half a million Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in health plans or prescription drug plans are receiving the wrong payments each month from Social Security, say officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington.About 16,000 beneficiaries clustered in three states - Nevada, Florida and Texas - have been shortchanged because Social Security computers deduct Medicare premiums they do not owe. Most are out more than $500, and many are owed more than $1,000.
But the vast majority, about a half-million beneficiaries, has the opposite problem: They were overpaid because their premiums were not deducted from their Social Security payments as they requested.
Now, those beneficiaries owe several months of premiums, often hundreds of dollars. And private insurers are faced with the ticklish task of trying to recover the money.
Senior officials of the two agencies involved - CMS and the Social Security Administration - have been meeting several times a week recently to try to resolve the issues, said Thomas Hutchinson, acting director of CMS' Medicare Plan Payment Group.
OIG Investigates Non-Attorney Withholding
Congress passed legislation recently requiring SSA to implement a program that allows non-attorney representatives of Social Security claimants to obtain withholding of fees in much the same manner as has been the case for attorneys since 1968. This is on a five year trial basis and began last summer. Non-attorney representatives who want to qualify must pass a test and meet other requirements. Social Security's Office of Inspector General has issued a relatively brief report on this trial program. The report contains only mild criticism of SSA and does not address some of the larger questions that have been raised about the program, such as whether the test is adequate or whether other provisions, such as the requirement of liability insurance, have been properly addressed. The issue on liability insurance is whether the insurance that many non-attorney representatives have obtained would actually reimburse for errors and omissions committed by the non-attorney representative or whether the insurance would only pay for something such as a situation in which a client suffered a physical injury in the attorney's office due to negligence, such as slipping on a wet floor.
McCrery Wants Social Security Changes Next Year
Jim McCrery, a strong candidate to become Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives and the current Chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee, told a group of lobbyist and reporters recently that he wanted action on Social Security reform next year. McCrery's remarks were blasted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Jun 6, 2006
Protecting Social Security Employees?
Social Security has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would allow the agency to refuse to release information about an employee's duty station or telephone number. The stated reason is to protect Social Security employees from the risk of domestic violence. However, the NPRM seems to fit into Social Security's longstanding aversion to releasing routine information such as agency telephone directories. For many years, Social Security stationery has been remarkable for not listing office addresses or telephone numbers, apart from Social Security's 800 number. It is a little hard to figure out why Social Security employees would need to fear domestic violence when they are at work. It is so difficult to get through to any individual Social Security employee on the telephone that it would be almost impossible to make harrassing telephone calls to any SSA employee. Almost all SSA offices now have security guards to protect employees on the job. If this rule becomes final, it would be impossible to obtain a list of Social Security ALJs with their duty station listed or a list of Module Managers at the Office of Central Operations. Is that really necessary to protect employees from attack?
Jun 5, 2006
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 |
Jun 4, 2006
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.
Jun 3, 2006
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
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
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
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
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.
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