New Role For Social Security?

From today's New York Times (emphasis added):

The government could rein in aggressive marketing practices of health insurance companies, regulate their premiums and allow workers to drop out of group health plans to seek a better deal on their own under legislation being developed by leading Democratic senators. ...

Under the Senate proposals, everyone would be required to carry insurance. The requirement would take effect in 2013 ...

In addition, most employers would be required to offer insurance to their full-time workers, or else pay a special tax. The government would set minimum standards for benefits ...

Consumers could sign up for insurance at hospitals, schools, Social Security offices and state departments of motor vehicles.

What Do You Think?

From a Social Security press release:

The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) has given Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security, their Public Health Leadership Award. The award was presented at the 2009 NORD Gala at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The NORD Gala is an annual event at which researchers and others are honored for significant achievements to improve the lives of people with rare diseases.

In recognizing Commissioner Astrue, NORD noted “his focus on reducing the disability backlog and improving service to the public.” A key component of the Commissioner’s backlog reduction plan is the agency’s Compassionate Allowances initiative, a way to expedite the processing of disability claims for applicants whose medical conditions are so severe that their conditions obviously meet Social Security’s standards. Social Security worked closely with NORD in developing the expedited decision process which was launched in October 2008 with a total of 50 conditions -- 25 rare diseases and 25 cancers.

Updated Fee Payment Information

The Social Security Administration has released the following updated information on payments of fees to attorneys and others for representing Social Security claimants:

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-09	28,423	$101,128,880.69
Feb-09	31,352	$112,791,207.17
Mar-09	29,199	$104,155,187.96
Apr-09	30,963	$110,133,425.19

Speaking Of The King

I Wouldn't Read Much Into This

The Associated Press has an article about a question that President Obama answered today about the possibility of increasing income limits for recipients of Social Security disability benefits. He is not opposed but he would like any change to be part of a broader review of entitlement programs.

From The NOSSCR Conference -- Nancy Shor

Nancy Shor, the Executive Director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR), spoke at the NOSSCR Conference (of course). Here are some points I picked up from her speech:

• She is concerned about the concept of a revolving fund in the budget for efforts to reduce "fraud" at Social Security. She thinks this could create incentives for Social Security to go overboard with Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs).
• Bills are pending in Congress to eliminate the five month waiting period for Title II Social Security disability benefits and the twenty-four month waiting period for Medicare for the disabled.
• She hopes to have a Senate sponsor within ten to fourteen days for legislation that would raise the cap on attorney fees under the fee agreement process to the full extent of inflation, almost $6,300 and to include an automatic adjustment for inflation in the future. John Lewis is already sponsoring the legislation in the House.
  
• She predicts that Social Security will not be able to send out 1099s to attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants even in 2010. The holdup is new regulations on recognizing entities as representing claimants.
• Ms. Shor believes that Social Security may have to publish a new Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) on recognizing entities as representatives of claimants because things may change so much from the NPRM published last year.
• Claimants' attorneys may have to use a "fob" device to obtain an code to access their clients' records electronically. Apparently, the fobs are easy to come by and inexpensive. These are already used to access some bank records.

From The NOSSCR Conference -- Barbara Kennelly

Barbara Kennelly, the Director of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, spoke at the NOSSCR Conference today. Here are a couple of points I picked up:

• She fears that if there are cuts in Social Security that disability benefits will be cut more than retirement benefits.
• She would like to see a 2% increase in Social Security benefits this year despite the lack of inflation.

From The NOSSCR Conference -- David Foster

David Foster, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, spoke today at the NOSSCR Conference. I will try to summarize what I got from his talk, but I must tell you that I had some difficulty understanding him. I found his speech pattern a bit disjointed. In a smaller forum where I could have seen his facial expressions there might have been little problem, but this was in a room with about 1,000 people. I hope I understood this correctly:

• Foster had on a suit, but spoke in his shirtsleeves.
• There was to have been a Senate Finance Committee hearing next Tuesday at which he would have spoken, but this has been postponed.
• Social Security has seen a recent spike in disability claims filed.
• He believes that Social Security turned the corner on the disability hearings backlog last month.
• Informal remands (also known as re-recon) may end soon due to backlogs at the Disability Determination Services (DDS) offices.
• Social Security hopes to adopt regulations recognizing entities as representatives of claimants by next February. Attorney and representative internet access to claimant electronic records is on hold pending these regulations. [See my next post for what Nancy Shor had to say on this subject. See below in this post for signs of bandwidth issues. that mighgt also delay this] He wants to include electronic access to earnings records to the e-file access.
• Social Security's Vocational Experts have recently received a 10% increase in the fees they are paid for testifying.
• A raise for Medical Expert witnesses testifying at ODAR is being complicated by possible effects upon the DDSs.
• E-scheduling is about a year from proof of concept and at least two years from implementation. Foster seemed dubious about the concept. [I heard from some other attorneys about some experiment along these lines going on now, which confuses me. They did not seem to understand what was going on either.]
• Robbie Watts (name?) was recently hired to help with coordination between ODAR and the DDSs. Watts, if I understood the name correctly, had been the director of the Natonal Council of DDS Directors.
• He took a question concerning a controversy about how a claimant's attorney could help a claimant file a claim electronically. The problem is that Social Security is insisting that the claimant literally push the "send" button to do this. Foster seemed to be blaming the advocacy community for opposition to legislation on this subject. [I did not understand where he was coming from, but then I do not understand why Social Security seems to be persisting in obstructing electronic filing of claims for this reason, at the same time they are encouraging electronic filing of claims.]
  
• ODAR is looking at centralized burning of CDs of claimant files for attorneys and representatives. He said that doing this locally was eating up too much bandwidth. [If this is eating up too much bandwidth, how can Social Security be seriously contemplating giving attorneys and representatives access to their clients' records online? That would eat up far more bandwidth.]