An Old Error Corrected

From The Day of Connecticut:

Montville — A local man was recently awarded more than 25 years worth of disability benefits, retroactive to the Reagan era.

Uncasville resident Robert Kram, 64, could receive about $150,000 in benefits dating back to December 1982, according to his lawyer, Thomas Albin. ...

Kram was granted Social Security disability benefits in July 1970, when he was 27 years old, based on chronic schizophrenia that was diagnosed and well-documented, according to Albin. Kram was paid monthly disability checks until the Social Security Administration, pursuant to a policy initiated by President Reagan, determined in December 1981 that Kram had made significant medical improvement.

Kram, living with his parents at the time, did not contest the decision and went without funds for many years while his parents took care of him.

“His parents didn't know how to go about filing an appeal, so instead, the following year they filed a new application,” Albin said.

His new application was also denied and not appealed.

In 1995, Kram's sister, Dorothy Smith of Quaker Hill, brought Kram to Albin's office to see what recourse he might have. ...

everal years passed and several court appearances followed. Kram's parents died during the appeal process, and another sister, Dolores, moved in to his Uncasville home to take care of him. ...

At a hearing in March, Billings S. Fuess, a medical expert, testified that Kram's condition had been disabling at all times, that he had never made any significant improvement and that his condition would have prevented him from filing his own appeal.

Administrative Law Judge Ronald Thomas found that Kram was impaired by schizophrenia and that he had not engaged in substantial activity since his diagnosis in 1970. He noted that Kram's condition had not improved, and the claimant meets the criteria to receive disability benefits.

Monthly Social Security Stats

The Social Security Administration has issued its monthly packages of statistics on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income.

Hearing Office Backlogs Correction

Let me correct something I posted yesterday. I said that the hearing backlog numbers that Social Security is releasing to the public understate the severity of the problem, since they do not include backlogs that delay requests for hearing reaching Social Security's hearing offices. I am pretty sure this is now incorrect.

The problem of Social Security's hearing backlog statistics being inaccurate because they counted only the time from the date the appeal reached a hearing office rather than from the date it was filed was one that existed in the old Hearing Office Tracking Systems (HOTS), but that has been replaced by the more accurate Case Processing Management System (CPMS), which apparently solved this problem. There is a report from Social Security's Office of Inspector General that discusses the improvements in going from HOTS to CPMS.

Remember, I am an attorney in private practice. I have never used either HOTS or CPMS.

The problem of data entry backlogs at Social Security's Field Offices to which I referred is a very real and growing problem that is receiving virtually no attention.

Somebody Is Confusing Me

The Disability Policy Collaboration is reporting that the House Appropriations Subcommittee that covers Social Security has reported out a $400 million increase for the Social Security Administration (which was what was expected), yet the Subcommittee's summary shows only a $100 million increase (which had surprised me). Is the Disability Policy Collaboration confused or is the Subcommittee summary misleading?

The same report from the Disability Policy Collaboration also says that:

House Republican leaders are urging their colleagues to sign a pledge to uphold the President’s promised vetoes of eight FY2008 appropriations bills that are expected to exceed the Administration’s budget request, including the Labor/HHS/Education proposal. The support of two-thirds of the House is necessary to override a veto. At the end of last week, about 140 Republicans had signed a letter being circulated by Representative John Campbell (R-CA) promising to support the President, leaving the GOP leadership still shy of having enough votes to sustain the veto threats.

More Personnel Or More Williard Scott Expenditures?

It looks as if Social Security may end up with more money than was called for in the President's proposed Fiscal Year 2008 budget. The appropriations bill pending in the House of Representatives would increase the budget by $100 million. Others want to increase the budget by $400 million or more above Bush's budget. However, Michael Astrue, Social Security's Commissioner wants no more than Bush's proposed budget.

This raises an important question. If Social Security ends up with more money than Bush and Astrue are asking for, what will Astrue do with the extra money? The assumption may be that he would use the extra money for more employees. There seems to be near universal agreement that Social Security needs more employees. However, I said near universal agreement. There are signs that the Office of Management and Budget is extremely interested in holding down the number of employees at the Social Security Administration. During former Commissioner Barnhart's term of office, the number of employees at Social Security declined rapidly, even though Social Security's operating budget was going up at greater than the rate of inflation. Bush's proposed 2008 budget for Social Security contains a 4% increase in agency funding -- but holds employment steady. Mike Astrue has already said that he intends to add about 1,000 employees to Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR). Does that mean that he intends to cut employment elsewhere at Social Security by 1,000? With extra money, does he just increase ODAR employment and hold employment elsewhere in Social Security steady? Does he just continue cutting employment elsewhere in Social Security and find other ways to spend the money?

There are always ways that an agency can spend money that do not involve hiring more people to get the work done. There are always contractors to hire and computer equipment to buy. Also, you can just waste money. My favorite Social Security waste of money was hiring Ari Fleischer and Willard Scott in 2006 to speak at a gathering of Social Security public relations personnel, as service was rapidly deteriorating at Social Security Field Offices.

So, if Social Security gets more money than the President proposed, does Astrue spend the money for more employees, who are hard to get rid of, or does he spend it on contractors and equipment that may or may not be needed, or does he just find ways to just fritter it away?

I have read some bad things about earmarks in appropriations bills, but I think some earmarks in Social Security's appropriations bill could be a good thing.

The Name "Mohammad"

This is a bit off topic, but fascinating. It is from a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy Magazine:

Last week we learned that Mohammed was the #2 name for baby boys in Britain last year, when the top 14 spellings were considered.

Of course, that made me wonder, how popular is Mohammed in the United States? So I visited the website of the U.S. Social Security Administration, which provides the top 1,000 baby names for each sex going back to the late 1800s. No spellings of Mohammed made it into the top 1,000 until 1976, when Muhammad came in 976th place with 73 births.

In 2006, Mohammed ranked #217, between Dominick and Rafael, when the four spellings that made it into the top 1,000 (Mohamed, Mohammad, Mohammed, and Muhammad, in order of decreasing popularity) were considered. No other spelling has ever made it into the top 1,000.

Then I wondered, were Muslims hesitant to name their sons Mohammed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? It looks like that might have been the case, at least for a while. The graph below shows how many Mohammeds of all four aforementioned spellings were born in the United States each year since 1976, with data coming from Social Security card applications.

Interestingly, a total of 27,350 Mohammeds of the top four spellings were born from 1976 to 2006. That may sound like a lot, but 24,418 Jacobs were born last year alone.

Social Security Appropriations Bill Markup Available In Streaming Video

The House Appropriations Committee is making its June 14 meeting to markup the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill available in streaming video. I had earlier reported that the bill had been reported out of committee, but it was only reported out of subcommittee. The markup session is to begin at 9:00 a.m.

Hearing Office Backlogs Report

The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) has obtained lists showing the backlogs at each of Social Security's hearing offices. I have reproduced this above. Click on each page to see it in full size. These shows the length of the wait time in days from the time that a Social Security hearing office receives a request for a hearing until the case is disposed of, for each hearing office and for each of Social Security's regions.

As bad is it looks, this understates the backlog, since it only shows the wait time from the date a hearing office receives and logs in an appeal. However, each appeal must pass through a Social Security field office before getting to a hearing office. In most cases, the field offices must do a significant amount of data entry before sending the appeal on to a hearing offices. There are increasing data entry backlogs at the field offices which delay these appeals getting to hearing offices, making the hearing backlogs look less bad than they actually are. The field office data entry backlogs are four months and longer in some locations. As best I can tell, no one is keeping track of the extent of the data entry backlogs. Upper levels of Social Security management appear to be trying hard to ignore the problem.