Forthcoming Ruling Alert

Social Security has filed a new ruling to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, which might be significant. The text is not yet available. Here is the description from the Office of Federal Register.

Social security rulings and acquiescence rulings:

Disability claims; consideration of opinions and other evidence from non-acceptable medical sources

New FEDRO Job Announcement

Social Security has posted a new job announcement for Federal Reviewing Officers (FEDROs). The announcement indicates only that there are "many vacancies."

Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty To Social Security Fraud

The Daily Iberian reports that Louis Wilkerson of New Iberia, LA pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud for failing to report that he was working while drawing Social Security disability benefits.

International Update

Social Security's Office of Policy has published its International Update for July, 2006. The Update gives information about Social Security developments in other countries.

NADE Releases Newsletter

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an association of disability examiners who work for state disability determination agencies, has released its Summer 2006 Newsletter. The Newsletter contains a good deal of detail about the Disability Service Improvement (DSI) experiment.

SSA Chief Actuary Opposes Accrual Accounting

USA Today reports that Social Security's Chief Actuary, Stephen Goss, has come out against accrual accounting for Social Security. Under accrual accounting Social Security's future obligations would have to be shown on government accounting reports, much as private corporations include their own future obligations to their retirees in their financial reports. Some accountants are recommending accrual accounting for Social Security. Part of this may simply a desire for higher accounting standards, but others seem to have an ulterior motive of making Social Security seem dangerously unstable. The Bush Administration opposes accrual accounting for Social Security.

NADR Newsletter

The National Association of Disability Representatives (NADR) has released its Summer 2006 Newsletter.

Proposed Changes To Immune System Listings

Social Security has issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that would amend the immune system Listings. The NPRM includes a major change that will help many who suffer from rheumatic disorders. Here is the summary of the change from the NPRM:

Each of these current listings, except current listing 14.09D [for AIDS], also requires you to have all four of the constitutional symptoms or signs: Severe fatigue, fever, malaise, and involuntary weight loss. We propose to revise this requirement to ‘‘at least two’’ of the constitutional symptoms or signs instead of all four, because we believe that the requirement in the current listing is too severe.

The proposal continues the trend of making the Listing preambles longer and longer. If current trends continue, the Listings will eventually be well over a hundred pages in length. An example of the padding of the Listing preambles occurs in the discussion of the AIDS Listing, which would be amended by the NPRM to include the following language that is already more appropriately included elsewhere in the Regulations:

Your symptoms, including pain, fatigue, and malaise, may be important factors in our determination whether your immune system disorder(s) meets or medically equals a listing or in our determination whether you are otherwise able to work. In order for us to consider your symptoms, you must have medical signs or laboratory findings showing the existence of a medically determinable impairment(s) that could reasonably be expected to produce the symptoms.