NADE Newsletter: Meetings, OIG Investigation, Legislative Proposal?, Differing Viewpoints On Testing For Malingering

The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of Disability Determination Service employees, has issued its Spring 2008 Newsletter.

Some nuggets from the newsletter (with a couple of comment in brackets]:

• A description of a meeting between NADE leaders and Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security
• A reference to a "closed" meeting between Astrue and members of the House Social Security Subcommittee
  
• "The Inspector General is doing an audit of SSA and state DDSs in response to the CBS program which indicated there is a 'climate of denial'. The IG staff plan to speak with DDS examiners in several states and people have left the state DDS agencies." [I will make a fearless prediction that Social Security's Inspector General will not find a "climate of denial."]
• "Legislation is being developed to allow SSA to request health records without an actual release form. The legislation will offer the assurance that SSA has an Electronic signature on file. Legislation has also been proposed to require attorneys to use iAppeal, the internet appeal process." [Legislation? I had heard that Social Security was considering requiring attorneys to file appeals via the internet, but I had assumed that regulations would be proposed. Did NADE misunderstand? If it is legislation, what else would be in this legislative proposal?]
  

The newsletter contains what is described as an "independent response" that will be of interest to some. Here is an excerpt:

A RECENT POLICY CLARIFICATION to a DDS questioner by the Social Security Administration on whether “tests of malingering” have any value for SSA evaluations will have a chilling effect on the scientific responsibility of psychology examiners to assess the validity of their findings. We believe this policy to be misguided, for it leads to inaccurate assessment in psychological consultative examinations (PCEs), and it can actually be harmful in permitting fraud, waste, and abuse of the system.

The policy statement claims that “malingering cannot be proven with tests,” and “malingering is one aspect of the larger sphere of inaccurate self-report.” The writer also said that the claimant who is likely to be malingering may have true impairment, and thus it is difficult to distinguish limiting effects of impairment from evidence that the impairment is fabricated or exaggerated. Echoing statements to the Administrative Law Judges (2005) by Dr. Terrence Dunlop, chief psychologist for DDS, the writer concludes that Symptom Validity Tests (SVT) are not “programmatically useful” in resolving the issue of credibility of claimants, and that there is no “gold standard” for establishing symptom validity.

This policy ignores the rigorous scientific development of symptom validity testing and malingering assessment over the last 10-15 years ...

On Hold

From the Raleigh, NC News and Observer:

The Social Security Administration's has reduced its staffing by more than 5 percent since 2003, to about 60,000.

That means seniors such as Early L. Graham of Raleigh have dealt with long hold times and promises of call backs that never come.

"I had to call three different numbers before I got anyone on the phone," Graham said.

Brian Simpson, a spokesman at the Social Security office in Raleigh, said he hears similar complaints all the time.

Trying to handle customer demand with fewer employees, the agency has shifted some workers away from phone lines to front desks to assist walk-in clients.

Graham, 64, said he has tried for more than a year to resolve a complicated issue regarding his Social Security payments. On the rare occasions when he has gotten someone on the phone, he has had to explain his situation from the beginning.

Success In New Jersey

From the New Jersey Herald:

It was an unexpected and totally welcome surprise.

Cassandra Kutner, a Lafayette wife and mother of two who was caught in a cycle of debt and unpaid bills, feels like she "won the lottery" when she got a call Monday from Social Security informing her that she had been approved for disability payments.

Kutner and her family had been living without her income since her multiple sclerosis worsened to the point that she could no longer work as a paralegal. She applied for disability in July 2007, and received a denial in February. In the meantime, bills kept piling up on the counter, and the family had even started using a wood-burning stove to lower their heating bills. But Kutner hired a lawyer, and the New Jersey Herald covered her story. ...

[I]n a little over two months, she got the call from Social Security telling her she'd received disability.

"It was way, way sooner than we had thought ... it was way earlier than we had expected," she said.

UNUM Forced To Approve 42% Of Reviewed Claims

Social Security employees may wonder why I post from time to time about goings-on in the world of Long Term Disability (LTD) insurance, provided under employer pension plans. Trust me, there is a big interplay between LTD and Social Security. Many people concerned with Social Security matters, such as attorneys who represent Social Security claimants and interest groups that lobby on Social Security matters, pay a lot of attention to what is going on in the LTD world.

This is from the Insurance Journal:

In a forced self-review, the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Unum Group agreed to fully or partly reverse 42 percent of previously denied disability claims and paid out $676 million in additional benefits.

The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance said the agreement with the Chattanooga-based insurer involved a review of claims from January 1997 through 2004.

An investigation of complaints about Unum's claims handling led to a $1 million fine in March 2003 after Georgia's insurance commissioner said regulators found a mindset of looking "for every technical legal way to avoid paying a claim.'' ...

Company spokesman Jim Sabourin said the reviews have been based on new standards and do not necessarily mean mistakes were made the first time.

"Essentially we are pleased that the exam process has been concluded and particularly pleased with the results,'' he said. "We have taken a lot of steps over the last couple of years to improve our claims practices and processes.''

Sabourin said the company handles about 400,000 claims a year and pays out about $6 billion in benefits, including $4.3 billion for disability.

He said the review started with the company sending about 300,000 letters to customers. About 70,000 of those "opted in,'' and about 20,000 of those responded and had their claims reviewed.

Sabourin said 41.7 percent of those 20,000 were reversed.

Waiting In Oregon

The Bend, Oregon Bulletin is running a lengthy story about the problems that Social Security disability claimants face. A tiny excerpt:

Massive backlogs have stretched application processing times to years, and even the agency itself has acknowledged that the situation is unacceptable. People who pay into the system through taxes and expect to be able to get benefits if needed are finding that the hurdles to getting those benefits are nearly insurmountable. Many are too sick or too hurt to work, which often leaves them with few resources and little to do but wait.

Iowa Field Office To Remain Open -- Office Closure Plans Not Looking Realistic

A press release:

U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Bruce Braley (IA-1), announced today that after months of pushing for answers, federal officials finally agreed to keep Clinton’s Social Security Administration (SSA) office open. Harkin and Braley thanked the Social Security Commissioner for responding favorably to the concerns raised by the community and praised Clinton’s City Council for their tireless work that resulted in this big win.

“I am proud to be able to deliver this great news to the people of Clinton. We have fought tooth and nail to ensure that these residents had proper access to their Social Security office,” said Harkin. “The Clinton people’s determination to maintain their community has truly paid off and I look forward to continue working with them as they develop a long term economic redevelopment strategy that will revitalize their area.”

“I’m thrilled the Social Security Administration reversed their decision to close the Clinton office,” Braley said. “The people of Clinton fought hard to keep this office open. After a lot of hard work, our persistence has paid off and we’ve reached a positive end. With baby boomers on the edge of retirement, the demand for Social Security services in Clinton is only going to grow. Keeping the office open will provide Clinton seniors full access to services they need.”

The Clinton SSA Social Security office was set to close by June 1; residents would then have to drive over 40 miles to the Davenport office to address their needs.

The local paper contains this:

In a letter to Harkin and Braley, Linda McMahon, deputy commissioner for Operations at the SSA, said the original decision to close the office came after an assessment of field facilities. After the assessment, the SSA concluded that overall service could be improved by closing the Clinton office and relocating staff to the Davenport SSA office.

“While we believe we have valid reasons for our original decision, which is part of a larger plan to provide the most efficient service we can in the state of Iowa, we understand the concerns that you raised on behalf of your constituents. Consequently, we have determined it is best to maintain the status quo at this time,” McMahon wrote.

Earlier, office closures were averted due to political pressure in Connecticut and North Dakota and now political pressure causes Social Security to back off closing an office in Iowa. It is obvious now that if politicians with enough clout raise enough ruckus that Social Security will back off a field office closure.

I do not see closing a lot of Social Security field offices as politically realistic.

Democrats And Social Security As A Campaign Issue

Josh Marshall writing for The Hill:

Even if President Bush and his Republican allies wanted to forget about Social Security privatization and pretend everything from last year never happened, it still tells you something about the Democrats’ political acumen and general unseriousness that so many of them are seemingly happy to let them send the whole topic right down the memory hole. ...

[Social Security] is, to put it mildly, a perfect wedge issue — a resonant political issue that Democratic candidates can hit on and hit on and that Republicans are afraid to touch. And of course there’s the extra benefit in that it’s actually an issue of great substance and importance to millions of people in their daily lives, unlike the flag-burning amendment, gay marriage, the campaign to shut down The New York Times and whatever other bogus election-season issues Hill Republicans plan to gin up over the next three months.

For too many Democrats, though, it’s just out of sight out, out of mind. If Republicans are done talking about it, that’s good enough for them.

Social Security And Ancient Sumerian

From Conde Nast Portfolio:

The Defense Department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems. So why does the Pentagon still have no idea where its money goes? ...

To enter the Indianapolis center [where the Department of Defense does much of its financial management] is to pass through a time warp, to a place where the most critical software programs date from the dawn of the computer age. They run on old-style I.B.M. mainframes and rely on Cobol, the ancient Sumerian of computer languages. "This was a bunch of systems patched together," says Greg Bitz, a former director of the center. "I never went home at night without worrying about one of them crashing." Bitz predicts a crisis as older programmers retire. "Try to find somebody today who knows Cobol," he says. ...

Guess what other federal agency is in the same time warp, heavily dependent upon mainframes running COBOL? Social Security.