Double Amputee Waiting

From the Belleville, Illinois News-Democrat:

Jennifer Moore was 15 months old when surgeons at the Shriner's Hospital in St. Louis amputated her disfigured left leg below the knee. Three years later they did the same thing to her right leg.

As if being a double-amputee wasn't enough of a challenge, Moore, 21, has battled a host of other birth defects, including an upside-down kidney and a blocked urethra, the tube to her bladder, making her susceptible to kidney infections.

What's making her struggle even tougher, though, is the fact she can't find a job.

Which means she can't get health care insurance. Which means she doesn't have a primary care physician.

So when Moore gets sick -- which is often -- her only recourse is to spend hours waiting in hospital emergency rooms for a doctor to see her. ...

Moore's been waiting more than a year for a chance to appeal the Social Security Administration's decision before an administrative law judge -- a situation made worse by a flood of new disability applications from newly jobless middle-aged workers, said Tom Yates, a spokesman for Health & Disability Advocates in Chicago.

The agency that reviews Social Security disability claims in Illinois has seen a 100 percent increase in initial claims, Yates said.

It's Time To Get Social Security Out Of The Federal Budget

From the Associated Press:

Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that's happened since the 1980s.

The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.

Social Security has been part of the federal budget for decades because it was always running a surplus. Those surpluses made the unified federal budget look better. If Social Security is going negative, it is time to take it off budget. Off budget would be great for the agency since there would be little reason to hold the agency's administrative budget down to the starvation levels we have seen in recent years -- and yes, despite the increased budgets since Democrats gained a majority in Congress in 2006, Social Security's budget remains in terrible shape. Social Security probably needs something like 20,000 additional employees to get its work done properly.

Why Waste Your Time Producing This?

From a recent report from Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

At the end of May 2009, over 750,000 hearings were pending in ODAR [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review], and the average processing time was 494 days. As outlined in its Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 2013 Strategic Plan, the Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to reduce the number of pending hearings to a desired level of 466,000 and the average processing time to 270 days by FY 2013. ...

The Acting Deputy Commissioner of SSA asked that we evaluate the impact of ODAR's current MI and ODAR's proposals on its ability to reduce the backlog to the desired pending level. ...

Regardless of whether the FY 2010 proposals are approved, it appears SSA will achieve the desired pending hearings level by FY 2013 based on the currently projected level of receipts.

The key phrase here is "based on the currently projected level of receipts." However, the official projections of receipts are wildly optimistic. New claims for benefits are exploding at a pace that Social Security never anticipated. This report is worthless, as I expect its authors and recipients know. What was the point of writing it?

House Approves Continuing Resolution

The federal fiscal year (FY) ends on September 30. To this point no money has been appropriated for Social Security after that date. However, on Friday the House of Representatives approved a continuing resolution that allows Social Security and other agencies to continue spending money for the next month at the same rate as in FY 2009. Presumably, the Senate will follow suit. It remains unclear when Social Security will have a true budget for FY 2010.

Fugitive Felon Fiasco

From the Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge approved a civil-court settlement requiring the Social Security Administration to repay $500 million to 80,000 recipients whose benefits it suspended after deeming them fugitives.

The supposed fugitives include a disabled widow with a previously suspended driver's license, a quadriplegic man in a nursing home and a Nevada grandmother mistaken for a rapist.

They were among at least 200,000 elderly and disabled people who lost their benefits in recent years under what the agency called the "Fugitive Felon" program. Launched in 1996 and extended to Social Security disability and old-age benefits in 2005, the program aimed to save taxpayers money by barring the payment of Social Security benefits to people "fleeing to avoid prosecution."

But some federal courts in recent years have concluded that most people the agency identified as fleeing felons were neither fleeing nor felons. The problem: Social Security employees relied on an operations manual stating that anyone with a warrant outstanding is a fugitive felon, whether the person is actually fleeing or attempting to avoid being captured. ...

Some "fugitives" were victims of mistaken identity. To identify felons, the agency cross-checked its database with databases of old warrants obtained from various law-enforcement agencies. If a match was found -- of a person's first and last name, and either Social Security number or date of birth -- the person was deemed to be a fugitive and his benefits suspended. The program didn't compare middle initials or gender.

Willie Mae Giacanni, 79, a retiree near Reno, Nev., was informed by the Social Security Administration in 2006 that her $350 a month benefit would be suspended because of a warrant outstanding in New York, a state she has never visited.

She said she "called different precincts," trying to find out what she was wanted for. A detective told her the warrant was for Willie Frank Thomas, who was wanted for kidnapping and rape in 1972. Although Mrs. Giacanni's first husband's surname was Thomas, and the suspect shared her birth date, he had a different Social Security number, middle name, gender and race, according to the New York City Police Department's fugitive-enforcement division.

Benefit Checks May Now Go To Viet Nam and Cambodia

Social Security has posted new rules in the Federal Register that will allow benefit checks to go to Viet Nam and Cambodia.

Bill Passes House On Medicare Premiums

This happened fast! From Congressional Quarterly:

The House on Thursday passed a bill that would prevent Medicare premiums from rising sharply for about 11 million senior citizens.

The vote was 406-18.

The legislation would block a big increase in Medicare Part B premiums for the affected seniors, who account for about 27 percent of those enrolled in the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

They are in jeopardy of a steep increase in their monthly premiums because of complexities in federal law and the likelihood that Social Security recipients won't get a bump in their benefits next year to cover the cost of the premium increase. ...

The Senate is expected to act on the premium bill soon.

The bill would cost $2.8 billion and would be offset by reducing the Medicare Improvement Fund, which the Health and Human Services Department uses to make improvements to Medicare Part A and Part B.

Colvin Nominated For Deputy Commissioner

The White House has announced that Carolyn Colvin has been nominated for the vacant position of Deputy Commissioner of Social Security. Here is background information on Colvin supplied by the White House:

Carolyn W. Colvin is Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation. Prior to this position, she was the CEO of AMERIGROUP Community Care, a company dedicated to caring for the financially vulnerable, seniors and people with disabilities through publicly-funded programs. Colvin served as the Director of Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services for over three years and as Cabinet Director of the Department of Human Services for the District of Columbia for over two years. She also brings over six and a half years experience working for the Social Security Administration, serving as the Deputy Commissioner for Operations and the Deputy Commissioner for Programs and Policy. In those roles, she provided executive leadership and directed the work of nearly 50,000 employees and the policy and programs of Social Security. She currently is a member of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the Arundel Community Development Services, the National Forum for Black Public Administrators, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.