Call 11 For Action Wants To Help, But Can't

From WTOL in Toledo:

She can't walk. She can't drive. She says she can't even work. Now her only source of income has been taken away, and she can't afford to live.

In desperate need of help, this west Toledo woman is turning to Call 11 for Action Problem Solver Mika Highsmith. ...

Turner was getting by on social security benefits, which were a little more than 600 dollars a month. But this past November, Turner got a letter saying it was her last check. And the reason? "They said because I wasn't disabled," she tells News 11.

Turner says she re-applied immediately, but has yet to get an answer. "I got a letter saying I'd hear something within 100 days. It's been five months."

Now this 52-year-old woman who has already lost so much is about to lose everything. "I'm four months behind on rent. My light bill is 400 dollars. They're about to turn off my phone on the 16." ...

Problem Solver Highsmith spoke with a rep from social security. She said you have to be re-certified every one, three or five years.

When it's your turn you'll get a letter in the mail. If you're denied, you have ten days to file an appeal for payment continuation. After that, you have 60 days to make an appeal without pay.

In this case, the rep says she can't give specifics due to privacy laws, but says she looking into the situation.

Rep Payee Outfit Leaves 600 In Limbo

From the Arizona Star:

Up to 600 elderly and disabled Tucsonans found their Social Security checks in limbo Tuesday after the company managing their funds abruptly shut its doors.

While the Social Security Administration is investigating SCOPE Payee Services, 524 N. Sixth Ave., its owners, Robert L. and Gary A. Skaggs, are nowhere to be found. ...

Since 2003, SCOPE has managed Social Security checks for the elderly and disabled [what Social Security calls a representative payee]. The non-profit functioned as a guardian, of sorts, receiving the checks and paying bills, like rent, for people who were not able to manage their own finances. The agency also distributed portions of the checks to the beneficiaries for day-to-day living expenses. ...

[C]ourt and state Corporation Commission documents suggest SCOPE and its predecessor, Specialized Creative Opportunities for Personal Environments, which also worked for the disabled and disadvantaged, were on collective shaky financial ground for years. ...

The Corporation Commission twice revoked the company's incorporation standing for failure to submit annual reports and pay appropriate fees. But the commission reinstated the company both times before dissolving it for good in 1998.

In October 1995, the company filed for corporate bankruptcy, but it continued to operate.

The U.S. Attorney's Office also filed a civil suit against Robert Skaggs and the company for unpaid 1996 income taxes and other payments. In March 2007, a federal judge signed an order for Robert Skaggs to pay $166,266.

Immigrants Help Social Security

From a New York Times editorial:

Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program’s trustees noted that growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.

One reason is that many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later. Another is that undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages.

LTD Carriers Choking Social Security?

From the New York Times:

The Social Security system is choking on paperwork and spending millions of dollars a year screening dubious applications for disability benefits, according to lawsuits filed by whistle-blowers.

Insurance companies are the source of the problem, the lawsuits say. The insurers are forcing many people who file disability claims with them to also apply to Social Security — even people who clearly do not qualify for the government program. ...

The policies they sell allow them to coordinate their benefit payments with others to make sure no one is paid twice. Thus, if a disabled person can get benefits from somewhere else — like workers’ compensation, a disability pension or Social Security — the insurance company can reduce the benefit check by that amount.

The flood of referrals, however, is making it hard for Social Security to respond to people who are truly disabled, said Kenneth D. Nibali, the former top administrator of the Social Security disability program.

“Anybody who is forced to come into this system, and who doesn’t need to be there, is affecting someone else,” said Mr. Nibali, who retired in 2002 and is serving as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. “They’re holding up cases for the people who have been waiting for months and years, who in many cases are much worse off.” ...

The Social Security Administration is not an active participant in the lawsuits and declined to comment on them. A spokesman, Mark Lassiter, said Social Security does not keep track of how many of its roughly 2.5 million annual applicants for disability are referred by insurance companies. But he cited academic research showing that 18 percent acknowledged privately that they were unqualified, because they could still work. “It is probable that many of these claimants were required to apply,” Mr. Lassiter said. ...

Forcing people who are injured to apply for Social Security before paying their claims appears to bolster insurers’ profits in several ways. If claimants refuse to apply, the insurers can simply stop paying their benefits, said Dawn Barrett, an employee of the Cigna Corporation, who grew frustrated sending people to Social Security and who is now a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits. More typically, she said, people apply for Social Security when an insurer tells them to. That allows the insurer to reduce its claim reserves, money that is kept in conservative investments for benefit payments. And in the insurance industry, smaller reserves mean bigger profits. ...

Mr. Nibali has calculated that it costs $1,180, on average, to process a single Social Security disability application to the first decision, usually a rejection. If the applicant persists through the first three levels — the initial review, a reconsideration and a hearing by an administrative law judge — the case will cost the system an average of $4,759, he found.

I am quite ready to criticize Unum and other Long Term Disability (LTD) insurers because I have a low opinion of them, but I do not understand the cause of action here, that is the basis for this lawsuit, nor am I buying the theory that LTD insurers are a cause of Social Security's backlogs. While there may be occasional cases where LTD carriers waste everyone's time with Social Security disability claims that have no chance of being approved, I have seen no sign that this is any real problem. There are plenty of hopeless claims filed by people who have no LTD involvement. In the main, insurers have good reason to recommend that LTD recipients file claims for Social Security disability benefits and pursue those claims aggressively. This benefits the insurance company, but it also benefits the claimants. My experience is that disability claims filed by LTD recipients have a high chance of success. Unless there is something to this lawsuit that I do not understand, I see nothing abusive about LTD insurers pressing LTD recipients to file Social Security disability claims. I think it is absurd to suggest that LTD insurers are in any real way responsible for the backlogs at Social Security. The only blame I would assign to LTD insurers is that they have done almost no lobbying to get the Social Security Administration a larger budget so it can process its cases.

Tax Cuts Compared To Social Security Shortfall

From the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Social Security trustees’ report issued this week estimates that Social Security faces a total shortfall over the next 75 years of 0.56 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is slightly less than the estimated cost over that same period of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts just for the top 1 percent of households: 0.6 percent of GDP.[i] (Currently, households in the top 1 percent make more than $450,000 per year.)

This striking fact should serve as a much-needed “reality check” in discussions over entitlement programs and the nation’s long-term fiscal future. Too often, such discussions assume that Social Security faces a titanic shortfall that will require radical restructuring of the program, while paying little or no attention to the enormous fiscal damage that would result from extending the tax cuts without paying for them.

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Suicide During Long Wait For Hearing And A Mother's Pain

From the Gaston, NC Gazette of March 29:

Less than a month before he committed suicide in March 2007, David "Joey" McKee's manic depression landed him in a hospital one last time.

A doctor's only solution was for McKee to somehow begin taking the prescribed antidepressants that he simply couldn't afford.

"The doctor told me no one is going to help him without insurance," said his mother, Lynn McKee.

McKee had been fighting a losing battle for two years to receive Social Security disability. The delays he experienced in waiting to learn whether he would qualify is typical of what people see across the country, and particularly in Charlotte.

Across the nation, a person applying for Social Security disability must wait an average of 511 days to receive an initial hearing. At Charlotte office, which handles applications from across the region, the average wait time for a hearing is 705 days, according to a recent national report.

And from the same newspaper on March 30:

Cars and trucks whizzing south on I-85 offered the only background music as Lynn McKee knelt by the memorial to her son on a windy morning this month.

The homemade wreath and Easter flowers she brought were carefully arranged beside a small cross, and stepping-stones etched with the words "harmony" and "wonder."

It was hard for McKee not to come to the overpass at Exit 5 in Cleveland County after David "Joey" McKee, 21, of Gastonia, committed suicide there a little more than a year ago.

Her visits have become less frequent over time. But for her and Joey McKee's other loved ones, the pain remains.

"Have I healed? No," said Lynn McKee "I can get up and go to work. I can get through most of the day without getting depressed.

"My heart is still broken wide open." ...

Lynn McKee blames her son's suicide largely on delays he encountered in applying for Social Security disability payments. Such delays have plagued the system and caused a backlog of cases across the nation in recent years.

Two House Members On Social Security Backlogs

From the Kansas City Star:

We read with grave concern The Star’s article (3/23, Moneywise, “Entitled and exhausted”) on the severe disability case backlog now plaguing the Social Security Administration.

Fifteen thousand Kansans are awaiting court hearings to determine their eligibility for disability benefits. Many of those 15,000 have suffered severe injuries or illnesses. Many are enduring a terminal disease or debilitating pain. At this time, when they are most vulnerable, they cannot afford bureaucratic delays.

In Kansas, the average Social Security disability appeal has stretched to 21 months — the longest delay in the nation. It is intolerable that anyone must wait nearly two years before receiving the benefits they deserve.

Today’s backlog crisis has many roots. Two decades ago, SSA employed more than 80,000 staffers to process benefit applications. Now, that number has fallen to 60,000, even as the rate of applications has risen sharply.

For six years, SSA has submitted its annual funding request only to the president — not to Congress, as it is legally authorized to do.

As members of the House, we have sponsored legislation to require SSA to submit its funding request directly to Congress each year. Once the legislative branch finally knows how much funding is required to eliminate the backlogs, Congress can at last respond with the resources necessary.

Kansans deserve nothing less.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore
Lenexa
U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda
Topeka