Things Not Looking So Good For ABT

From a September 2008 report of the Government Accountability Office:

Over the last decade, SSA has initiated 14 demonstration projects under its authority to test possible DI [Disability Insurance] and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] policy and program changes; however, these projects have yielded limited information for influencing program and policy decisions. Of the 14 projects, SSA has completed 4, cancelled 5, and had 5 projects in progress as of June 2008. In total, SSA spent about $155 million on its projects as of April 2008, and officials anticipate spending another $220 million in the coming years on those projects currently under way. Yet, these projects have yielded limited information on the impacts of the program and policy changes they were testing. ...

From a Presolicitation notice just posted by Social Security on FedBizOpps:

As part of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999, Congress mandated the SSA conduct a demonstration project testing a program under which Title II disability benefits are reduced, or offset, $1 for $2 above a specific amount of earnings. SSA moved forward with this Congressional mandate by competitively awarding design contract number SS00-04-60110 in 2004. This contract stated that upon successful completion of a design, SSA would award an Implementation and Evaluation contract to the design contractor on a sole source basis. Contract #SS00-04-60110 ended in September 2008 and SSA is ready to implement and evaluate the $1 for $2 demonstration project.

We have now concluded that “successful completion of the previous contract” does not meet any of the exceptions in the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA). Additionally, the President issued a Memorandum on March 4, 2009 directing Executive Agencies to make every effort to use a competitive process for contract awards. We have thus determined that a sole source contract award based upon previous contract performance is no longer appropriate. For all of these reasons, we will award the Implementation and Evaluation contract through a competitive procurement process.

ABT Associates had the BOND contract. Social Security's Inspector General has been critical of ABT's performance on this contract.

Instructions On Those $250 Payments

You might think that by now all of the $250 economic stimulus payments to Social Security beneficiaries have been paid. Wrong. Claimants are still becoming newly eligible for those payments as they are retroactively approved for benefits during the appropriate time period. The vast majority of these are disabled individuals who delayed in filing claims or had to wait for Social Security to adjudicate their cases. Those claimants can become eligible for $250 payments through the end of next year. Social Security has issued staff instructions saying that these payments will not be made at the same time as the back benefit payments to the claimants. They will be batched and paid every three months as separate payments.

Also, some recipients just do not want their $250 economic recovery payments. Social Security has also issued staff instructions for dealing with those folks. Basically, they say to tell the claimant to please take the money and then make a gift to the federal government but there are also instructions for claimants who return their checks.

Oregonian Wins Award

The Oregonian newspaper has won an award for the series of articles it ran last year on the terrible backlogs at Social Security.

Furloughs At Hawaii DDS

Hawaii is yet another state furloughing its state employees. This is described as a near 14% cut. The newspaper article does not say so, but I am told that state Disability Determination Services employees are included in the furloughs.

Overdraft Fees And Social Security

From the Los Angeles Times:

The California Supreme Court unanimously overturned a billion-dollar class-action award against Bank of America Corp. on Monday, ruling that banks can collect overdraft fees from accounts in which government benefits intended for subsistence are directly deposited.

What Does This Have To Do With The DOT?

Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel is having a meeting on June 10 and 11. Here are a couple of items on the agenda:

• Clinical Inference in the Assessment of Mental Residual Functional Capacity -- Panel Discussion and Deliberation
• Subcommittee Chair Report – Mental/Cognitive Panel Discussion and Deliberation

I thought this panel was supposed to work on a replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT), which has been used to determine whether alternative work exists that an impaired individual can perform when he or she is unable to perform past relevant work. What do these topics have to do with replacing the DOT? Do we have mission creep here? Do we have a panel working towards an entirely new method of determining disability?

Blind Man Has Trouble With Social Security

From WSPA in Greenville, SC:

When I first met 61-year-old James Beck it was easy to tell just how difficult it was for him to get around.
“I have to ask somebody whether it’s daylight or dark,“ Beck said.

Beck is legally blind and he says he has the paperwork from his doctors to prove it.

“It’s bad just living in the dark all the time you miss so many things, the sunset and the sunrise and all and you can’t see television but I enjoy listening to it,“ said Beck.

The Social Security Administration says he can work denying him disability benefits for more than two years.

“That man at Social Security said blind people works,“ said Beck. “Well I haven’t been able to find a job.“ ...

SSA’s spokesperson, Patti Patterson, talked with us by phone from Atlanta. She told us a senior attorney denied Beck’s claim in January but a judge approved it after we called, without any new evidence.

Lots Of Hiring? Committed To Talking With The Union?

From the Federal Times:

Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue is overseeing one of the largest federal hiring efforts currently under way. He wants to bring in about 6,500 new employees by fall to reduce claims backlogs and address other needs. In an interview with Federal Times last week, he emphasized the importance of diversity in hiring and the challenges of training a workforce with so many new employees. ...

Following are excerpts of the interview:

Q: Both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the fiscal 2009 appropriations gave SSA significant allocations for hiring. What advances are you making in hiring?

Astrue: We’ve hired as of [May 26], since the first week in March, about 3,700 people. So we have almost another 3,000 to try to hire between now and the end of September. If we get Congress passing the president’s budget on a timely basis, we’ll continue hiring. We should be up over about 68,000 employees at that point. We’ve dipped as low as about 60,000 in the past. So this makes a big difference, particularly in our ability to serve the public.

Q: What about administrative law judges to adjudicate decisions on the nearly three-quarters of a million in disability claims backlogged?

Astrue: We are, this week, hiring 157 new administrative law judges, and the budget for next year calls for hiring another 208. We lose about 60 to 65 a year. [Currently, 1,150 are on board.] That means we’re also opening up a lot of new hearing offices; so we have 17 new hearing offices [for a total of 157] ... and two new national hearing centers [for a total of four]....

Q: How have you approached working with the unions?

Astrue: You try to talk directly, develop relationships. Sometimes that’s worked well; sometimes that worked well for a while, and then did not work very well … In general, if you commit yourself and this is true on both sides of the table, to talking regularly, candidly and professionally, people find common ground. There’ve been some instances where, once we’ve talked about things or where things were raised for us, they’ve expected to have opposition, and we weren’t opposed. But if you don’t talk on a regular basis, you miss some of those opportunities.