OIG Report On ALJ Productivity

Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) and hearing office productivity. The report tells us that higher producing ALJs approved a higher percentage of cases than lower producing ALJs and that an increased percentage of on the record reversals, that is approvals without a hearing, accounted for a good part of that difference. Higher producing ALJs also held shorter hearings.

The report tells us that a higher ratio of staff to ALJ helped produce more decisions. Commissioner Astrue had stated back in June that "We have also received some criticism that we are not providing adequate support staff for our administrative law judge corps. In my opinion, that is a fiction designed to sidetrack some of our productivity initiatives." That statement, which was not off the cuff, but in Astrue's written statement to a Congressional committee is not looking too good at the moment.

Here is an excerpt from the report worth quoting:

ALJs stated that the electronic folder has slowed case processing. While some ALJs indicated the slowdown is a result of the learning curve associated with the electronic folder, other ALJs assert that processing cases with the electronic folder will always be slower than with paper files. Specifically, some ALJs stated that it is faster to page through a paper file than navigate through the screens and documents attached in the electronic folder. ODAR has confirmed that there are general intermittent systems performance issues, such as limited bandwidth causing periods of slow response times. However, because the problems are intermittent, documentation of these occurrences was not available from ODAR. Information was not available for us to determine the impact the electronic folder has had on case processing times.

Why is it that this is the first official report from Social Security discussing this topic? Why is it that they lack sufficient information? It is like they have been afraid to try to find out whether the electronic folder is working. After this length of time the lack of proof that the electronic folder has improved productivity is rather powerful proof to me that it is not working. If the electronic folder were succeeding, Social Security would be quick to gather proof of the success and to tell the world.

Let me ask the question that OIG did not try to ask or answer. Where would Social Security be today if the money lavished upon the electronic folder contractors had been spent on additional employees to get the work done? The answer is obvious. The backlog at Social Security would be vastly smaller, maybe even non-existent.

I nominate the electronic folder as the worst single decision in the history of the Social Security Administration and Jo Anne Barnhart as the worst Commissioner in Social Security history.

Death Of Claimant After Denial

From a new Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) issuance:

When a disabled claimant dies from a non-traumatic impairment within 1 year of the date of denial or cessation, and a reconsideration was not requested by the claimant before his/her death, or one has not been filed subsequently by a survivor, the case is reexamined and possibly reopened. No Request for Reconsideration (SSA-561) is required. If death resulted from a subsequent traumatic event, no reexamination is made under this procedure.

Waiting In Minnesota

From the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

Patricia Heimerl landed her first job in high school, bought a house at 22 and worked the last eight years of a long office career at Intel. She paid her bills, built a retirement account and, like most Americans, watched as Social Security took its cut from every paycheck.

Part of those deductions went to an insurance fund that pays benefits to people who become too sick or injured to work. Heimerl couldn't imagine that would ever mean her.

Then it did.

Doctors diagnosed her with fibromyalgia, which causes chronic muscle pain. Heimerl couldn't hold a job.

In January, the Social Security Administration decided the 55-year-old McMinnville, Ore., resident was disabled and approved her for benefits.

Here's what it cost her: six years.

Six years fighting Social Security's delays. Six years dealing with lawyers and paperwork. Six years burning through savings and selling her house to survive.

A Little Help, Please

On a daily basis I take a look at the FedBizOpps website to see what goods and services the Social Security Administration is interested in purchasing, but I would also like to look at who gets those contracts. I see some of that now because vendors who get major contracts often issue press releases, but I would like to look at this on a more systematic basis. Is there a database of contracts issued by the Social Security Administration available online? If you know, please use the feedback button on the right side of the page to clue me in.

Lou Dobbs Take Note: Social Security Trust Fund Projections May Be Unreliable Due To Failure To Consider Immigrant Earnings

The most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin has been released. It is labeled Volume 68, Number 1. I think they got so far behind in issuing the Social Security Bulletin that they no longer even put a date on them.

One interesting article tells us that the earnings of immigrants have not been factored into projections of the future financial status of the Social Security trust funds. Given the volume of immigration into the United States in recent decades, this tells me that the projections we now have of the future status of the Social Security trust funds may be unreliable. The trust funds may be in better shape than anyone realized. I am surprised that this is the first time that I have heard of this issue.

Sort Of Saying One Thing, While Meaning Another

Take a look at this memo from Social Security's Office of Disability Policy (ODP) in answer to the question, "Whether an individual with a below-knee amputation and no indication of stump complications, who does not use a prosthesis due to inability to afford one, can be found disabled." The memo was obtained by the National Association of Disability Exmainers (NADE). It sounds like a simple question that ought to have a simple answer.

Social Security's answer to the question, however, rambles on. While the memo suggests that the answer is "Yes", the memo mostly discusses various way in which an individual in the situation described could be denied and never says how such an individual could be approved. The overall impression I get from the memo is that the answer is actually "No, we want you to deny those folks, but you can't quote us on that."

Actually, it does not matter what the memo says. The real policy will never be in writing in a memo. Actually saying what the policy is might be embarrassing. NADE members will intuit the true answer from the tone of the memo and from the cases they see returned to them by Social Security's Quality Assurance process. Those Quality Assurance returns are hidden away in individual claimant files and cannot be released to the public, allowing Social Security to hide its true policy from public scrutiny.

If you are on the outside of Social Security wondering why so many disability claims get denied, study this and think about it. It is a microcosm of disability policy at Social Security. The policy documents released to the public are always hazy and hard to understand, but do not sound too unreasonable, while the actual results on the ground do not seem to match up with what the policy documents seem to say.

OMB Clears Hearing Loss Listings

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, must clear all proposed federal regulations before they are published in the Federal Register for public comments. OMB has just cleared proposed new Listings for hearing loss. The OMB website lists the "completed action" on the proposed regulations as "Consistent with Change."

Normally, these proposed regulations appear in the Federal Register within a few days after OMB clears them. The proposed new mental impairment Listings were cleared by OMB almost a month ago but have still not been published.

The Oregonian Editorial On Backlog

The Oregonian followed its stories on the terrible backlogs at Social Security with an editorial. Here are a few excerpts:

Hundreds of thousands of disabled workers in America have become Hurricane Katrina-style victims of a failing federal bureaucracy. ...

This is yet another stain on the legacy of President Bush. A backlog in claims existed before he took office, but it had been shrinking under the Clinton administration. Under Bush it has nearly doubled. ...

Underfunding is part of the problem. ...

But White House ideology plays a role in this disgrace, too. Bush plucked Jo Anne Barnhart from the Republican political trenches to serve six years as his Social Security administrator, and she appeared to share her boss's lack of enthusiasm for the entitlement program. ...

It's fair to question the competence of the Social Security bureaucracy under Barnhart, too. In just one example cited by Denson and Walth, the agency mistakenly overpaid more than $4 billion in disability payments in 2006, and now it's adding grief to the lives of millions of recipients by billing them for reimbursement.

I think the cracks about "a failed federal bureaucracy" and the "[in]competence of the Social Security bureaucracy" are unfair. Any government agency will fail if it lacks the basic resources to get the job done. Blaming the "bureaucracy" is part of what got us where we are. If the incompetence of the "bureaucracy" is the problem, the solution is not to give the bureaucracy more money but to demand that the bureaucracy become competent. That is what has been done since 1994 when Republicans took control of Congress, with disastrous results. The ideology that incompetent federal bureaucrats were to blame for any problem in the federal government led to the fiascoes of "Reinventing Government," "Hearing Process Improvement" and "Disability Service Improvement," three efforts at "reforming" the bureaucracy that made things dramatically worse, while providing the crucial justification for cutting Social Security's operating budget.

The truth is that, on the whole, the Social Security Administration runs a pretty tight ship. Squeezing out further efficiencies is difficult. Only small incremental improvements can be achieved. Most of what is currently being presented as evidence of increased efficiency at Social Security is misleading. Employees and managers try to meet statistical goals -- for that which is being measured -- while that which is not being measured, primarily quality, goes to hell. As I have said before, it is reminiscent of Soviet five year plans.

What is needed at Social Security is not so much competence as honesty and modesty. We need upper management to be honest with itself and with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget about what is possible given current funding. We need upper management to be modest about the agency can do with the resources they have been given and more modest in talking about Social Security's productivity "gains."