The Social Security Administration Office of Disability, Adjudication and Review [ODAR] will move ... by the end of June.
The government agency ... will employ 45 people in the Downtown office building.
The Social Security office ... had outgrown its space.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
The local paper contains this: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.
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.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.
“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.
