Happy 73rd Birthday, Social Security!

Screwup In Nebraska

From the Lincoln Journal Star:

About 7,400 Medicare beneficiaries in Nebraska can request a waiver of a recent decision that two months Part B premium arrearages would be withheld from their September Social Security check.

This situation arose when an incorrect list from the State of Nebraska was sent to Social Security identifying more than 9,500 Part B beneficiaries for whom the State of Nebraska was going to pay their Medicare Part B premiums beginning April 2008. ...

Each beneficiary received a refund of several months Medicare Part B premiums. After the list was corrected, beneficiaries were told that the overpayments created by this erroneous list would be collected from the benefit they will receive in September.

To request a waiver of the overpayment, beneficiaries should contact Social Security ...

Interesting that they are treating this as an overpayment subject to waiver.

Hearing Loss Listings

The Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) for the new hearing loss listings will be in the Federal Register tomorrow, but you can read it today. I see no major departure from the current listings on a cursory review.

This was cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on August 6 and will appear in the Federal Register on August 13, which is a fairly normal interval between these two events. The NPRM for the new mental impairment listings was cleared by OMB on July 9, but has still not appeared in the Federal Register. I do not know the reason for the delay, but I have to guess that it has some significance.

Waiting In South Carolina

WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, SC has a "Problem Solver" reporter. This reporter found that she was getting more calls about backlogs in adjudicating Social Security disability claims than anything else, so she did a story on the subject. Take a look at the video.

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.