Updated Fee Payment Stats

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
May-09	36,603	$126,725,262.45
June-09	31,799	$113,962,564.84
July-09	34,802	$124,621,068.71
August-09	28,218	$100,279,282.51
Sept-09	28,455	$100,918,402.40
Oct-09	36,729	$131,011,485.43

Social Security Advertises Chief Of Staff Position

The Social Security Administration is advertising an opening in the position of Chief of Staff. Here is the description of the job from the notice:

The Chief of Staff to the Commissioner of Social Security acts as personal advisor to the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Social Security covering the full range of the agency's mission. S/He is a key leader in setting and articulating the Commissioner's vision and strategic direction for the agency. Internally, the Chief of Staff oversees the tactical execution of the Commissioner's strategic vision among the agency's executive leadership. S/He represents the Commissioner in discussions with the White House, Members of Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Personnel Management, other Federal agencies, executives of State and local governments, and others who are interested in the policies and programs of the Social Security Administration.

Off Topic -- The Strangest Sports Video You've Ever Seen

I Thought This Was The U.S. Treasury's Job

Does anyone know what this presolicitation notice from Social Security means?

The Social Security Administration (SSA) located in Baltimore, MD has a requirement for an establishment where money is stored for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans or exchanged and is a FDIC member institution to provide banking services to implement and maintain a Third Party Payment System (TPPS) that will allow SSA to issue selected payments using payment instruments. Payment instruments mean drafts, checks or other similar negotiable instruments that will be printed and provided by the Government Printing Office. The contractor shall service up to 6,000 SSA cashiers in approximately 1,500 SSA offices worldwide. SSA expects to issue in fiscal year 2010 approximately 300,000 payments equaling an estimated $110,000,000. The SSA TPPS shall require 1 master account and 15 subsidiary accounts.

Thirty Options For Financing Social Security

The National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) has released Fixing Social Security: Adequate Benefits, Adequate Financing, a report that outlines thirty options for putting the program's finances on a sound footing for the next 75 years.

9th Circuit Says Supreme Court Meant What It Said In Gisbrecht

From the opinion of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Crawford v. Astrue, released today:

We review three consolidated appeals that present one overarching issue: Did the district court follow the mandate of Gisbrecht v. Barnhart, 535 U.S. 789 (2002), in determining the amount of attorneys’ fees awarded to lawyers who successfully represented Social Security disability insurance (“SSDI”) claimants in federal court under contingent-fee contracts? We hold in each case that it did not. We vacate the district courts’ orders and grant the attorneys the contingencybased fees they requested. ...

By beginning with the lodestar calculation, the district courts plainly failed to respect the “primacy of lawful attorney-client fee agreements.” Gisbrecht, 535 U.S. at 793. ...

These cases vividly demonstrate the deleterious effect of a district court’s failure to recognize the distinction between fee-shifting cases and cases involving payment by the claimant from his benefit award. ...

The district court orders quote extensively from Gisbrecht. They even cursorily discuss the character of the representation—noting that it was skillful and not dilatory—before concluding that the requested fee would represent a windfall to the attorneys. But this parroting of language from Gisbrecht does not mean that the district courts actually applied its teachings.

There have been a lot of District Courts around the country that have done what the Court of Appeals condemned in this case.

Some Clues?

Some time ago Social Security published a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) on entities as representatives of claimants. The NPRM was confused, particularly when it came to definitions, because Social Security had not thought through the issues. The agency has promised final regulations by February 2010. A recent issuance in Social Security's Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) may suggest where the agency is heading since it provides definitions for terms such as "advocacy services", "entity", "representative" and "representational services", but I have to say that I cannot tell much from it. Maybe you can.

Isn't PR Great

From what amounts to an ad for Allsup, Inc. that got published in the Salt Lake Tribune:

As the worst recession since the Great Depression appears to be ending, the Social Security Administration grapples with an unprecedented flood of disability applications due to aging baby-boomers and heavy job losses.

Pending claims are expected to jump 70 percent this year, said Dan Allsup, spokesman for Illinois-based Allsup Inc., which represents people applying for disability payments.

"We've seen a tremendous spike in our disability applications," [Social Security spokesperson Mark] Lassiter said, noting that a year ago, 2.6 million claims were forecast and 3 million were filed.

"This year we're expecting 3.3 million," he said. ...

"It's a much more complicated and lengthy process than filing taxes," Allsup said. "And that's a primary reason that SSA denies two-thirds of applications due to poor preparation of the forms."

Even so, Allsup Inc. also rejects two-thirds of those who seek its assistance -- but for different reasons, he said.

"We work on a contingency basis," Allsup said, 25 percent, up to $5,300, of the back payments awarded to applicants. "So for obvious reasons, we won't accept a fraudulent claim or one that we know won't be awarded."

About 98 percent of their accepted clients do ultimately gain government approval, Allsup added.