Cleveland Plain Dealer On Social Security Backlogs

Some excerpts from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Even with a $2 trillion trust fund for its budget, the Social Security Administration is in serious jeopardy, facing increasing backlogs as it processes more claims with fewer employees.

Richard Warsinskey, manager of the administration's Cleveland office, says he is as frustrated as those who wait for hours in an office or get a recording when they call for help with retirement benefits, survivor or disability benefits or Supplemental Security Income.

"We are really concerned for the public," Warsinskey said during a recent interview with The Plain Dealer. "We want them to get good service, the right amount of money and not wait so long. People are dying before disability decisions are made." ...

What's the biggest concern?

Disability claims take more than half our resources. But we will see a growth in retirement next year as the first of baby boomers turn 62 and are in their first year of eligibility.

Why the backlog in disability claims?

About 90,000 more people have filed each of the last five years. Budget cuts have led to the lowest field office staffing level since the early 1970s. ...

What could further overwhelm your staff?

We are concerned about proposed immigration rules. Currently when someone is hired, their information is sent to Social Security and we check the Social Security number. If it doesn't match, we send it back to the employer. They weren't obligated to do anything but may be required to send the employee to SSA to straighten it out.

Bismark And Social Security Backlogs

KFVR-TV, located in a city named after the German Chancellor, is running a story on current Social Security backlogs. If this story has reached Bismark, North Dakota, it is truly a national story.

I cannot help recalling a little history. The true father of Social Security is not Franklin Roosevelt but Otto von Bismark. (Take a look at some history about Bismark and Social Security.) By the time Social Security reached the United States, Social Security had already been in effect in Germany for 46 years.

Conservatives who predict that Social Security will soon run out of money may consider why Bismark, no liberal, is the true father of Social Security and how Social Security has managed to last 118 years in Germany despite German losses in two World Wars, an incredible episode of hyperinflation between the two World Wars, the Cold War and the eventual reunification of Germany.

No Match Letters May Not Curb Illegal Immigration

From MercuryNews.com:

A week after unveiling a major crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants, the Bush administration is now conceding that its most heavily touted weapon in pursuing employers - an assault against Social Security fraud - will be nearly useless.

That's because when the Social Security Administration warns employers about bogus identification numbers, it remains barred from also alerting the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that's supposed to hand out penalties.

In addition, federal promises to hold companies responsible for hiring illegal immigrants could potentially be stymied by several other issues: Employers are still not required to check a new employee's Social Security number against a free federal database, there could be long gaps between when an employee is hired to when the warnings are issued each year, and there is no way to follow up on employees who have been fired. In many cases, illegal workers could still hop from job to job without being caught.

The only way the government can punish an employer - with fines or criminal charges - is if someone first tips them off about potential fraud and then, during the course of the investigation, authorities discover evidence that Social Security warnings have been ignore.

An Image From 1956

Drug Binges And Social Security Disability Benefits

From a press release issued by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Foundation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:

Paying out certain types of government aid in a monthly lump sum appears to fuel a spate of harmful and often fatal drug binges, according to a new study in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Public Economics that links the monthly arrival of disability checks with a sharp rise in drug related hospitalizations and deaths. The findings by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Texas A&M University suggests that spreading out aid payments over several weeks could be a way to relieve some of the stress on hospitals and health care workers who struggle to handle the monthly surge.

The analysis found that in California, the 23 percent increase in drug-related hospital admissions that occurs in the first five days of any given month is driven largely by the arrival of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Income (DI) payments. In particular, hospital deaths among SSI recipients increase 22 percent at the beginning of the month.

SSA Awards $80 Million Contract

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has awarded a large contract to Micro Tech LLC according to the Baltimore Business Journal. The contract is to provide "mainframe systems engineering and administration and telecommunications and Internet support services" to Social Security's National Computing Center in Baltimore. The initial contract is only for one year, but may be extended for four more years. If extended, the contract would be worth $80 million. EDS (Ross Perot's company), Apptis and Open Technology Group are also involved in the contract.

Clarification Asked On Long Term Care

From Medical News Today:

More than three dozen House members on Aug. 2 sent a letter to the Social Security Administration asking the agency to clarify that Medicare does not cover long-term care, CQ HealthBeat reports. The bipartisan letter urges SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue to include in Social Security statements sent annually to 143 million U.S. residents the sentence: "Medicare generally does not pay for long-term care."

The statement currently says that Medicare provides some coverage for "nursing care," which the lawmakers wrote "creates an unnecessary risk that individuals will assume Medicare covers an extended stay in a nursing home, when in fact it does not."

Poll Results

The Social Security Administration has restarted the Senior Attorney program. Do you think this is a good idea?

Yes, restarting Senior Attorney is a good idea (109)	75%
No, restarting Senior Attorney is a bad idea (32)	22%
Don't Know/No opinion (4)	3%

Total Votes: 145