Press Release On "Compassionate Allowance Hearing

A press release from the Social Security Administration:

The Social Security Administration is making statements from its two-day public hearing with some of the nation’s leading experts on rare diseases available online at www.socialsecurity.gov. The experts presented testimony and shared their views about Social Security’s efforts to identify and implement “compassionate allowances” for children and adults with rare diseases.

“We need to identify and fast-track disability cases that are certain or near-certain to be allowed,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. “The compassionate allowances initiative will allow the Social Security Administration to make decisions on cases involving certain categories of conditions in days or weeks instead of months or years.”

Compassionate allowances are a way of quickly identifying diseases and other medical conditions that invariably qualify under Social Security’s Listing of Impairments based on minimal objective medical information. Compassionate allowances will let Social Security quickly target the most obviously disabled individuals for allowances based on objective medical information that can be obtained quickly. Many of these claims can be allowed based on confirmation of the diagnosis alone; for example, acute leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and pancreatic cancer. In these cases, allowances can be made as soon as the diagnosis is confirmed or the other necessary objective medical evidence is obtained.

This hearing, held on December 4th and 5th in Washington, D.C., is the first of four public hearings that Social Security plans to hold over the next year.

Please go to www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionateallowances for testimony from many of the rare disease experts and a photo gallery of the hearing.

How can you call it a public hearing, when the public was not allowed to even attend the hearing, much less speak? It is not as if many people were interested in attending. I was not. Still, it is a reach to describe this as a public hearing.

White House Says No Budget Compromise

From The Hill:

The White House responded sharply on Saturday to reports that the congressional Democratic leadership was putting the finishing touches on a huge omnibus spending bill that includes funding for the ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle issued a blunt veto threat ...

“Although the Administration has not seen the legislation, according to press reports it would include $18 billion in additional domestic and emergency spending above the president’s budget,” Nussle said. “When added to emergency domestic spending Congress already included in the Defense Appropriations bill, this so-called compromise would result in more excess spending than even the Democrats’ original budget included.”

McCrery To Retire

Jim McCrery, formerly Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Social Security Subcommittee, has announced that he will not be standing for re-election next year.

Budget Plan In The Works

From the New York Times:

Congressional leaders are assembling a $500 billion package to try to resolve an impasse by providing President Bush with unfettered money for the Iraq war in exchange for new spending on popular domestic programs. ...

Under the Democratic plan described by senior aides, the Iraq money would be voted on separately, to allow lawmakers opposed to the war to add money for health care, education, home heating programs, border enforcement and other initiatives. ...

“This is not a done deal by any stretch,” said a top House Democrat, who, like others, would not speak for the record about the negotiations because the measures were being developed and the situation was so fluid. ...

As envisioned, the package would exceed the president’s overall spending limit by $11 billion, down from the $22 billion that Democrats had initially sought. The amount could increase with emergency spending sought by the administration, as well as lawmakers.

Opinion Piece On Social Security Backlogs

From the Statesman Journal of Salem, OR:

Previous Congresses have passed big tax cuts for the wealthy in less time than it takes a U.S. worker or a U.S. soldier to get approval for a disability claim. ...

AARP reports that the average wait for a disability claim hearing is 520 days.

Just getting a response on anything isn't easy. More than half of all calls to the 1,500 local Social Security Administration offices get a busy signal. And in many communities, if you decided to show up in person instead, it means waits measured by the hour. ...

This sad state of affairs is the result of conscious neglect by past Congresses and the president. They constantly have whittled away Social Security Administration and Veterans Affairs budget requests for more personnel to reduce the backlog. The Social Security Administration overall staffing is the lowest is has been in 34 years.

OMB Action Completed

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is reporting that it has completed action on three recent regulatory packages from the Social Security Administration. These are Privacy and Disclosure of Official Records and Information; Availability of Information and Records to the Public, Proposed Suspension of New Claims to the Federal Reviewing Official Review Level and Revised Medical Criteria for Evaluating Functional Limitations Due to Digestive Disorders.

I do not think any of these is controversial. I imagine that the Official Records package is housekeeping. The Digestive Disorders package is almost certainly a minor correction to recent final listings for digestive disorders, since it was approved by OMB in less than a week. The suspension of Federal Reviewing Official (FedRO) Review has been coming since Michael Astrue was appointed Commissioner of Social Security. He made it clear early on that he intended to kill the FedRO program. That will be tough for those who took the FedRO jobs, but no one else will mourn the end of the FedRO program.

More From The Pacific Northwest

From The Oregonian:

You have a good job, you're buying your own home, you've accumulated a life savings for retirement or to pay for the kids' college educations.

And then you get sick. Really sick. ...

You apply for Social Security disability. It's not a handout; you're asking for your own money -- money you've been contributing with every paycheck you received, through the FICA tax that's been withheld.

And you get denied. ...

That's what happens to 69.6 percent of the people in Oregon who apply for Social Security disability. They're denied the first time they apply.

So they make a "reconsideration request." And in Oregon, 90.3 percent of those people are denied.

The next step is to ask for a hearing. And the average wait in Portland for a Social Security disability hearing?

It's 668 days. ...

In a single year, says Portland attorney Richard Sly, 15 of his clients died waiting for a hearing after their applications for SSI disability had been twice rejected. ...

When applicants finally do get hearings, the majority are granted benefits. Why are so many rejected at first? No one can explain.

Delays In Pacific Northwest

From the Spokesman-Review (registration required):

The first members of the huge baby boom generation are beginning to file applications for Social Security retirement benefits. Those not old enough to file for retirement are in their disability-prone years, and record numbers are applying for disability benefits at Social Security offices like the ones in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene.

However, while faced with these growing workloads, the SSA is being starved of the funding and front-line employees needed to provide the high level of service that American workers have paid for, expect and deserve. Both applicants and taxpayers are being seriously harmed.

Social Security will collect $150 billion more in taxes than it will pay out in benefits this year, so why isn't there enough money to properly run the programs? The reason is that the agency's annual administrative budget must be authorized as part of the Labor-Health and Human Services spending bill, and the president has vetoed the bill passed by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Eastern Washington's U.S. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Doc Hastings are the only members of the state's congressional delegation who voted against the bill and to sustain the president's veto. The 435-member House was just two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. ...

Service deterioration affects access to service by telephone. It is getting much more difficult to get through on the agency's toll-free number, and more than half of the callers to SSA field offices now get a busy signal. It is projected in the upcoming year the Spokane District (Spokane and Coeur d' Alene) will be understaffed seven to eight bodies, and without the requested budget here in the Spokane/CDA area we will be impacted dramatically. Backlogs will occur and phones will go unanswered as other parts of the nation are already experiencing.