Call For Action Gets The Job Done

From WXYZ in Detroit:

A woman who spent months in a big battle for social security benefits decided she needed to "Call for Action," and Bill Spencer got right on the case. ...

Under Social Security rules she should have been entitled to collect disability benefits of $704.00 a month for herself and another $400.00 a month for her dead husband.

It took years for Betty to be approved for benefits related to her social security claim, but the back benefits related to her husband’s account were never paid out.

That’s when Betty “Called for Action”… we jumped all over this case and for 4 weeks straight we fought to get her that money.

Finally, four weeks later Betty received a check for $11,170.00.

Results Of Last Week's Unscientific Poll

For those who represent Social Security claimants, how happy are you with your work?

Extremely happy (14)	33%
Very happy (14)	33%
Somewhat happy (8)	19%
A little unhappy (1)	2%
Very unhappy (3)	7%
Extremely unhappy (2)	5%

Total Votes: 42

Poll

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

New Cancer Listings Coming

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, has to approve all new regulations before they are published in the Federal Register. OMB has just approved new Listings for "Malignant Neoplastic Diseases," otherwise known as cancer. Expect these new Listings to appear in the Federal Register shortly.

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.