Why Do You Need To Study This For Nine Years?

From a press release:

Data Systems International (DSI) announced today that it has been awarded a contract with Abt Associates to implement its industry-leading software, ClientTrack™, as part of the Social Security Administration's Benefits Offset National Demonstration (BOND). ...

Over the next 9 years, the BOND project will track and evaluate nearly 1 million U.S. citizens receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to assess whether a change in the SSDI benefits structure will improve their employment and income. Currently, recipients lose all of their SSDI income if they exceed certain income limits (i.e., the substantial gainful activity threshold; SGA). As a result, SSDI recipients may not actively pursue work opportunities due to concerns of losing their SSDI income. The solution being evaluated through BOND is to gradually reduce the SSDI benefit by $1 for every $2 above the SGA, thus providing a financial incentive for individuals to return to work and earn income beyond the current SSDI limits.

It's The Aging Of The Baby Boom Generation

From the Washington Post:

The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation's economic problems, heightening concern that the jobless are expanding the program beyond its intended purpose of aiding the disabled.

Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, to 2.8 million, between 2008 and 2009, as the economy was seriously faltering.

The growth is the sharpest in the 54-year history of the program. It threatens the program's fiscal stability and adds to an administrative backlog that is slowing the flow of benefits to those who need them most....

Economists say the program has grown because eligibility rules were loosened in the 1980s.

Poll

See below for excerpts from the Re-Imagining Social Security report.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

Dessert Is Ibuprofen

From today's New York Times:

At the Cooper Tire plant in Findlay, Ohio, Jack Hartley, who is 58, works a 12-hour shift assembling tires: pulling piles of rubber and lining over a drum, cutting the material with a hot knife, lifting the half-finished tire, which weighs 10 to 20 pounds, and throwing it onto a rack.

Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.”

He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that’s it.”

After years of debate about how to keep Social Security solvent, the White House has created an 18-member panel to consider changes, including raising the retirement age. Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the House minority leader, has called for raising the age as high as 70 in the next 20 years, and many Democrats have endorsed similar steps, against opposition from some liberal groups. The panel will report by Dec. 1, after the midterm elections. ...

A new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job like Mr. Hartley’s — including hammering nails, bending under sinks, lifting baggage — that can be radically different at age 69 than at age 62. Still others work under difficult conditions, like exposure to heat or cold, exposure to contaminants or weather, cramped workplaces or standing for long stretches.

In all, the researchers found that 45 percent of older workers, or 8.5 million, held such difficult jobs. For janitors, nurses’ aides, plumbers, cashiers, waiters, cooks, carpenters, maintenance workers and others, raising the retirement age may mean squeezing more out of a declining body.

I have clients who perform that tire building job -- except they are making truck tires. Can you imagine how heavy that work is? I am told that it is rare for an employees to make it to 65 at that plant.

What Do You Think?

Recommendations from the report of the Re-Imagining Social Security Subcommittee of Social Security's Future Systems Technology Advisory Panel:

Move to an electronic customer self-service model with the goal of moving transactions to the Internet each year until 90% of the business with SSA takes place online.

• Provide other channels for:

~Complex transactions that are not suited to online execution
~Those who cannot or will not use technology

• Develop a series of incentives to encourage and direct the public to utilize the electronic self-service model. ...
• Implement a program to automate the initial disability claim decision that would only require human review for denied claims. ...
• Lead a government-wide study group to discuss options with other agencies to pilot a single government service center in each region for individuals who need face-to-face service across from different agencies. (For example, IRS, SSA, INS, State Social Services, etc.)

~Consider contracting-out providing the services by third parties vs. each agency.
~Look at the model in some state DMVs. ...

~Consider outsourcing some activities to third parties, e.g. libraries.

[Scenarios demonstrating the Subcommittee's vision for the future]

Disability determination

• SSA examiner uses [information provided by claimant] along with database of prior determinations
• Decision support tools provide recommendation

~Statistical analysis and AI [Artificial Intelligence] programs gather information on similar cases and their outcomes and report to examiner

~90% of cases are determined automatically

• Positive decisions are not reviewed

• SSA staff reviews rejected claims

In case of an appeal

• The first hearing is with an AU[?], the claimant and an attorney using Google Wave

• Face-to-face hearings occur depending on the case backlog and the outcome of the Wave conference

• A scheduling system assigns cases in backlogged areas to areas that are more lightly loaded for video hearings

• Decision support for the administrative law judge

~Statistical and Al programs search the database of appeals to report on similar cases and their outcomes

Updated Fee Payment Numbers

Social Security's numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and certain others for representing Social Security claimants:

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-10	32,227	$111,440,046.23
Feb-10	29,914	$105,708,101.59
Mar-10	34,983	$122,874,426.87
Apr-10	44,740	$153,478,589.32
May-10	34,686	$119,527,194.40
June-10	32,432	$111,887,579.72
July-10	32,232	$132,328,622.27
Aug-10	34,755	$119,424,346.42

Missing 230,000 Centenarians

I had posted earlier about concerns in Japan that their Social Security system was paying retirement benefits to some supposed centenarians who had actually died years earlier. Now comes a report that there may be 230,000 such people! The Japanese Social Security records were so bad that they had 77,000 people over 120 years old listed as still alive and 884 who were supposedly over 150 years old!

Data Center Delays

From NextGov:

A stimulus project to replace an aging Social Security Administration data center is more than six months behind schedule due to a disagreement over where to locate the upgraded computer facility. ...

The government planned to purchase land for the facility in March, according to the initial project plans. But SSA and GSA officials postponed the site selection, amid questions from House Ways and Means Committee members and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, about the cost efficiency of using stimulus money for new property rather than taking advantage of available space on SSA's campus in Woodlawn, Md. ...

SSA pushed back site selection to September so GSA could thoroughly study the Woodlawn vicinity as a possible location, according to a revised Recovery Act plan Social Security issued in June. GSA now anticipates buying the property in December, according to the document. Substantial construction should be complete by October 2013.

The updated plan states that, after a formal review, SSA and staff from the House Ways and Means Committee, which had requested the cost-benefit analysis, agreed GSA should continue searching for a site off-campus.

But on Wednesday, an aide for Grassley, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, said the senator still is concerned about the government spending money to buy land, when property on Social Security's campus could be reconfigured to function as a new data center instead.