Fee Payment Stats

The Social Security Administration has released updated figures on payments of fees to attorneys and others for representing Social Security claimants. As I always say upon posting these numbers, the attorney is paid at about the same time as the claimant. When you see that payments of these fees go up or go down, you are seeing payment of benefits to claimants go up or down.

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-08	20,559	$75,368,163.45
Feb-08	26,570	$95,228,284.32
Mar-08	23,088	$83,166,027.02
Apr-08	27,296	$98,616,579.78
May-08	29,305	$104,283,373.35

Where You Are

I thought I would share some info from Google Analytics about the locations from which people are logging onto this blog. These figures below are from the past week for the United States. There are a negligible number of hits from outside the United States. The figure given is on the number of visits, rather than the number of page views.

Apparently, 77% of the visitors coming from the ssa.gov domain show Maryland as the location from which they are logging on and 23% show North Carolina. None show any other location, but obviously, people in other states are logging onto this blog from ssa.gov. My impression is that Social Security must have two major internet portals, one in Maryland and one in North Carolina, through which all ssa.gov access to the internet is routed, regardless of where the person accessing the blog may be sitting. The location of this portal is reported rather than the actual location of the user.

And, by the way, I have no way in the world of determining exactly who is reading this blog. Google Analytics gives a lot of information, but it cannot identify any individual.

1.	Maryland	1,491
2.	North Carolina	537
3.	California	131
4.	District of Columbia	127
5.	Missouri	117
6.	(not set)	115
7.	Virginia	114
8.	Illinois	104
9.	Georgia	101
10.	Massachusetts	98
11.	New York	85
12.	Michigan	82
13.	Ohio	80
14.	Florida	77
15.	Texas	75
16.	Pennsylvania	64
17.	Tennessee	55
18.	Washington	54
19.	New Jersey	45
20.	South Carolina	43
21.	Kansas	27
22.	Iowa	24
23.	Oregon	24
24.	Delaware	24
25.	West Virginia	23
26.	Connecticut	22
27.	Alabama	20
28.	Colorado	16
29.	Maine	15
30.	Utah	14
31.	Oklahoma	13
32.	Nevada	13
33.	Wisconsin	12
34.	Minnesota	11
35.	Arkansas	10
36.	Indiana	10
37.	New Mexico	9
38.	Louisiana	8
39.	Kentucky	8
40.	Arizona	7
41.	Vermont	7
42.	New Hampshire	7
43.	Mississippi	7
44.	Rhode Island	5
45.	North Dakota	2
46.	Nebraska	2
47.	Hawaii	1

De Soto Clarifies Remarks

I had earlier posted that Lisa De Soto, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, said at the conference of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) in Miami on June 5 that Social Security had received an additional 140,000 requests for hearing this year, a statement that if true would be stunning news. The next day I posted a report that I had received through the grapevine that De Soto had misspoken, that she had meant to say that the 140,00 additional cases was over the next few years.

I have now heard that Ms. De Soto has officially asked NOSSCR to notify its members that she misspoke in saying that there were 140,000 additional requests for hearing this year. She meant to say 140,000 additional requests for hearing over the next several years.

NPRM On Evidentiary Standards

As mentioned yesterday, the Social Security Administration has published a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) in the Federal Register that would define the terms "preponderance of the evidence" and "substantial evidence." It appears innocuous to me.

Hearing Backlog Growing

I have received a report from a well placed source that the backlog of cases at Social Security awaiting a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) is currently a whopping 769,000 and increasing at the rate of about 10,000 per month. Currently, 59% of these cases have not been worked up for review by an ALJ.

The math is pretty simple. On average, each Social Security ALJs is currently disposing of about 50 cases per month. 10,000 divided by 50 is 200. This means that just to prevent the backlog from growing, Social Security would need an additional 200 ALJs. To reduce the backlog would take more than 200 ALJs. Social Security's plans do not call for increasing the number of its ALJs by anything like 200. Therefore, Social Security has no current plan for preventing the backlog from growing, much less a plan for reducing it.

Voinovich Meets With Astrue About Backlogs

From a piece by Senator George Voinovitch (R-Ohio) published in the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum:

In addition to overseeing individual cases for constituents, I am also pushing for improvements in Social Security on the national level. I have met with Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security Administration, on multiple occasions to raise my concerns about the backlog of claims and the long delays in scheduling hearings throughout Ohio. In fact, Commissioner Astrue attended my roundtable in Ohio last year, where he sat down with the managers of all the Hearing Offices in the state.

I am particularly pleased that Commissioner Astrue has recognized the significance of the problem in Ohio and -- since January -- has hired 13 new administrative law judges. He assured me that the Social Security Administration expects to see further improvements when the automated case writing system and template is deployed.

Notice the willingness to believe that Commissioner Astrue has a plan to resolve the backlogs -- a very different tone than Democrats in Congress are taking.

NPRM Coming Tomorrow On Evidentiary Standard

Social Security has filed a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) that will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow. This NPRM, if adopted, would include for the first time in Social Security's regulations the following definitions:

Preponderance of the evidence means such relevant evidence that as a whole shows that the existence of the fact to be proven is more likely than not.

Substantial evidence means such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.

This touches upon something very important, but it still seems so innocous that it is hard to understand why they are bothering. This are standard definitions. Is there something here that I am missing?

Did They Notice The Irony?

From a press release issued by Allsup, a large non-attorney representer of Social Security disability claimants:

The nationwide rollout has begun and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) recipients in some states already have the option of receiving their benefit payments electronically on a debit card, rather than via a paper check. However, eligible individuals – many of whom are “unbanked” – should have a clear understanding of the pros and cons of opting for the debit card, particularly the financial ramifications, according to Allsup, which represents tens of thousands of people in the SSDI process each year. ...

One of the reasons that some Social Security recipients continue to insist on paper checks is the fear that their bank accounts could be attached by creditors. However, under federal law, Social Security benefit payments are protected from attachment, meaning creditors do not have the right to take these funds from a recipient’s bank account. The same rules will apply to funds placed on Direct Express debit cards. ...

''At any given time, there are likely millions of dollars in Social Security payments that are at risk because people on fixed incomes got into debt or are having a dispute with a creditor,'' said Gada. ''Unfortunately, they are acting on inaccurate information that has them afraid to put their money into bank accounts where it can be protected and they can be afforded other benefits of being banked.''

Here is a little nugget from Allsup's website concerning the services Allsup offers to corporations:

Maximize Social Security offsets and overpayment recovery for disabled participants. With our Overpayment Recovery Service, we will: ...

Recover

:

Withdraw overpayment funds directly from claimant’s bank account using our patented electronic process.