Social Security Disability Protest In France

From AFP:

Thousands of disabled people demonstrated in the streets of Paris to demand higher benefit payments ...

Protestors in wheelchairs and on crutches, wearing red shirts, were joined in Paris by HIV positive patients, blind demonstrators with guide dogs and others, behind a banner urgently demanding "income to survive."

Arnaud de Broca, president of Fnath, one of around 100 campaign groups in the demonstration, said they wanted an increase in the disability allowance -- currently 628 euros (990 dollars) per month for a disabled adult.

"You can't live on that," he said.

The Death Of Newspapers

If you read blogs such as this on a regular basis, you ought to read Eric Alterman's piece in this week's New Yorker magazine, "Out Of Print," about the rapid decline and impending death of newspapers. The culprit is the new media, of which this blog is a tiny part. Only 19% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 even look at a daily newspaper.

Alterman does not miss the irony, obvious to readers of this blog, that the new media are heavily dependent upon newspapers for their content.

I have had occasion to talk with reporters from the traditional media on several occasions lately. They alway seem to ask where they could go to learn more about what is going on at Social Security. For obvious reasons, I always mention this blog. The response has always been the same, an audible sneer of contempt from the reporter.

SSI Monthly Stats

The Social Security Administration has issued its monthly statistical package for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

New OMB Filing

Social Security must get approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, before publishing any rule-making document in the Federal Register. This item was filed yesterday:

AGENCY: SSA	RIN: 0960-AG74
TITLE: Revised Medical Criteria for Evaluating Cardiovascular Disorders (3477A)
STAGE: Prerule	ECONOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT: No
** RECEIVED DATE: 03/27/2008	LEGAL DEADLINE: None

Politician Helps In New York

From the Times Herald-Record of the Hudson Valley in New York:

With some high-profile intervention, electrician Robert Veneziali is about to get the disability benefits he deserves.

Veneziali hated going on disability. He's worked all his life and he's proud of it. But the type of multiple sclerosis he suffers from is unpredictable. One day he was fine, the next, he had hardly enough strength to call for help.

So when he called for help to the agency designed to provide working people with exactly that, he was devastated when that agency decided he wasn't sick enough to qualify for benefits.

Try back in another 18 months, they said. But he had a wife and three kids to support.

Veneziali's mother, Elaine, who had seen her son consumed by the disease, was having none of it. Last January, she called Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, who had seen a report alleging that a bureaucratic "culture of denial" permeated some Social Security Administration offices.

Hall paid a well-publicized visit to Elaine Veniziali's home in February. He called her son's treatment "unconscionable." He threatened a federal inquiry.

Wednesday, Veneziali learned his appeal had been approved for disability benefits by an SSA review board. The benefits are retroactive to August, when he first applied for them. He'll get about $1,300 a month, plus about $1,200 for the kids.

Delays In Minnesota

From KAAL in Austin, MN and note that Allsup is quoted:

One woman, barely able to dress herself, had to wait two years for just one disability check. Social Security says the reason is because its offices are backed up.

Earlier this month, Senator Norm Coleman added his name to the list of U.S. Senators pushing for a 2009 appropriations bill with more necessary money going to Social Security disability offices. ...

"People are dying while waiting to get a decision on their disability benefits and it's just a horrible situation,” says Dan Allsup of Allsup Social Security Disability Representation.

The Social Security Administration says it’s doing all it can. Officials at the regional social security office out of Chicago say offices nationwide have been under-funded by a total of $1 billion over the last five years.

Turbotax And Lump Sum Payments Of Social Security Benefits

From TaxMama's TaxQuips:

Today TaxMama hears from Scott in Utah, who’s upset . “My wife and I E-filed using TurboTax online deluxe, reporting a lump sum Social Security payment. We had a refund coming from both fed and state. Then we got an IRS letter telling us ‘We changed the amount of taxable social security benefits on line 20b of your form 1040 because there was an error in the computation of the taxable amount.’ Now we owe a ton of money – and TurboTax says it will take six weeks to review my situation. What do we do now?”

TaxMama Replies

Dear Scott,

Call up IRS and ask them to put a 60-day hold on your file. Tell them that you are working with
your software provider to find the problem. ...

Meanwhile, do pester Turbo Tax and try to run the Lump Sum calculation yourself to see if the number on your tax return was correct. ...

Call TurboTax regularly and make a friendly, but persistent pest of yourself. Remind them that they told MarketWatch.com last year, that their program WILL handle this computation properly – so why should you have to wait six weeks for them to get this to work for you?

While you’re waiting, try to figure out the calculation yourself. Follow IRS’s worksheet on the Social Security lump sum calculation. See Lump Sum – example
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p915/ar02.html .

The Social Security Administration has recently issued new instructions for its employees about taxation of Social Security benefits but failed to mention the problems connected with lump sum payments of back Social Security benefits that cover more than one year. By the way, if your first thought is that the way this is handled is to file amended tax returns for earlier years, your first thought is dead wrong.

Too Late

From Melanie Payne at the Fort Myers, FL News-Press:

Rick Shagla can't walk. The stiff fingers of his hands are splayed at odd angles, making his handwriting illegible.

He's lost sensation in his extremities. If he can't see his hands and feet, he loses where they are. Unless he's paying attention, he could place his hand on the burner of a hot stove and he wouldn't know it.

Shagla was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome in 1987. He then had testicular cancer. He continued to develop neuro-muscular problems and needed a wheelchair.

In 2002, the Social Security Administration deemed Shagla permanently disabled, granting him full benefits and Medicare eligibility. By 2008, he was receiving $2,487 a month.

Then, in February, Shagla got a letter saying that his Social Security Disability payments had been miscalculated over the past six years. He'd been overpaid, on average, by $1,200 a month.

Not only would his payments be cut to $1,100 a month, he also owed the agency $83,252.

Sometimes when people call me, I can hear so much panic in their voices that it scares me. Shagla's call was one of those.

This was a desperate man.

He'd been evicted. He couldn't pay his Medicare supplemental health insurance.

"They just ripped my life apart," the 47-year-old man said as he sat surrounded by moving boxes. "I'll end up going to a nursing home."

I called Social Security in Atlanta and spoke with Patti Patterson. After a week or so, she called me back.

"Good news," Patterson said. "It was a mistake."

Patterson said Shagla would get his money for March in a couple of weeks, and in April, he'd be reinstated to his previous level of benefits.

"This is rare," Patterson said of the error made in Shagla's benefit change. "We have told him we're sorry."

I got lost in Patterson's explanation of how the mistake was made. But that's OK. I don't need to know how it happened.

I did wonder, however, how often it happens and how long it takes to fix if you don't have The News-Press calling Social Security for a statement?

The answer: All the time and forever.

According to Douglas Mohney, an attorney with the Avard Law Offices in Cape Coral, Social Security is, "an incredibly complex system and tens of thousands of people a year get hung up by not quite knowing the rules since no one gives a complete explanation."

People receiving benefits can suddenly stop getting them, like Shagla, and it takes years to have them reinstated.

Other people trying to qualify for benefits are repeatedly denied and have to wait for a hearing before an administrative law judge, Mohney said.

Getting a hearing can take years. One of Mohney's clients applied for Social Security Disability in 2005. His hearing is scheduled for April 1.

"He's on a cane, and he's been homeless four or five times," Mohney said.

Many of his clients die while waiting.

When I was talking to Mohney, he had on his desk the file of a woman who had been waiting three years for a hearing. She had a number of health problems, including depression.

Mohney had just received notice that her hearing had been scheduled for April.

But she won't need it.

She committed suicide.