Fraud In Omaha

From KOLN and KGIN in Nebraska:

An Omaha man has been put on five years' probation and must pay more than $50,000 in restitution after being convicted of Social Security fraud.

Jesse Erwin failed to report his asphalt paving business to the Social Security Administration between 2001 and 2007, while the 65-year-old was collecting $54,000 in disability benefits.

VCU Benefits From Ticket To Work

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia Commonwealth University has been awarded a $4.2 million contract to help people with disabilities find jobs that reduce their dependence on government assistance

The three-year contract from the Social Security Administration will allow VCU to provide training and technical assistance for more than 500 so-called community work incentives coordinators ...

Since 2000, the Work Incentives Planning and Assistance National Training Center at VCU has been awarded more than $14 million in federal contracts and provided training and technical assistance to 800 community-based professionals providing service to more than 250,000 Social Security beneficiaries.

And just what did Social Security get for that $14 million? Where are the success stories of Social Security disability recipients being put back to work? I have no doubt that has VCU fulfilled its contracts. The question is whether Ticket to Work has fulfilled its promise and the answer to that is obviously "No." That $14 million could have been better used for other purposes.

AARP Advertising On Social Security Budget

This ad is appearing this week and next in Congress Daily and Congressional Quarterly. Click on it to see it full size.

Aged Cases Report

Courtesy of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR). Click on each image to see it full size.

Why Did This Go In The Federal Register?

From today's Federal Register:

The Commissioner of Social Security gives notice that SSA intends to add a new calculator to its online Benefit Calculators suite. The Retirement Estimator will allow authenticated individuals to calculate estimates of potential retirement benefits in real-time, based in part on their SSA-maintained records and in part on user-entered information, such as the last year of Social Security earnings. In addition to quick estimates of retirement benefits at specific points such as full retirement age, users may also submit a number of ``what if'' scenarios based on information they provide regarding future earnings and retirement dates. The estimates can be printed and saved. The initial release of the Retirement Estimator will not reflect offset due to the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), or Government Pension Offset (GPO)....

The Retirement Estimator will be released to the public on July 19, 2008.

Lowest Approval Rate In History

From a press release issued by the Council for Disability Awareness (which appears to be a Long Term Disability Insurance industry group):

The number of workers applying for SSDI disability payments increased to 2.2 million in 2007, 2.6% more that in 2006, while the number of disabled workers approved for payments declined to 37.6 percent, the lowest approval rate in the history of the program.

NY Times Editorial On E-Verify

From today's New York Times:

To hear some in Congress tell it, the federal government urgently needs to expand its electronic employment verification system, E-Verify, to all corners of the country and force every business to use it. But a hearing in the House last week raised serious questions about the costs and collateral damage of that expansion, the latest scheme by hard-liners to slam the door shut on unauthorized immigrant workers. ...

Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut and president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, warned at the hearing that forcing Social Security to take on the enormous burden of immigration enforcement would be a harmful diversion from its core mission and could strain the bureaucracy to the breaking point.

Lie Detectors For Social Security Claimants?

This is from The Inquirer, a British newspaper, repeat, a British newspaper:

THE GOVERNMENT has put £1.5million up for another round of lie detector test pilots for social security helplines run by local authorities in the UK. ...

The DWP [agency administering British Social Security?] said today in a statement that "initial results" from the seven pilots it has conducted across seven local authorities had been "successful". It provided no other details but said the results justified another round of pilot projects with another fifteen local authorities. ...

The software, licensed through Capita by Digilog UK, which bought the UK licence from Nemesysco, an Israeli software developer, attaches risk scores to people after analysing their voices on the telephone. It will alert a call handler with a "pip" and an on-screen assessment if it thinks it has detected a "high-risk" person. According to Capita, half the people it assesses as high risk turn out to be no risk at all.

Harrow Council said today it had saved an estimated £420,000 in the year since it first installed the software. This was derived from a DWP estimate of the amount a person would typically claim on benefit.

The figure was calculated on the assumption that 132 people who refused to complete the voice-risk analysis assessment would otherwise have tried to cheat the system; and that 500 people who, though they had been flagged as low risk, had declared their personal circumstances had changed and no longer needed benefits would also have otherwise attempted to cheat the system.

Out of 1559 benefits claimants processed by the lie detection system, 118 were flagged as high risk. Just 24 of those, or 1.5 per cent, had their benefits decreased as a result of the intrusion.