And Some People Think It's Real Easy To Get On Social Security Disability

From Bill McClellan's column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Marcella Myer, who is 52, was a clumsy child. Not that she remembers it that way. She shook her head when I asked if she ever felt there was something wrong with her. But her mother remembers. "She used to fall in the middle of the floor," said Delorse Knehans. ...

She has lived with her mother her entire life. She never married. After graduating from Lutheran South High School, she worked at a gas station and then in nursing homes. Then she got a job in the warehouse at Famous-Barr, which, of course, became Macy's. She lost that job in 2008. She told me she just couldn't keep up anymore.

By that time, Lisa [her niece] had noticed [Marcella's] condition deteriorating. Her gait was becoming increasingly unsteady. Her speech was slurred. She has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. ...

Lisa suggested she apply for Social Security disability. "You just can't work any more," she said.

Marcella applied for disability. She was turned down. She had a hearing on that denial in March of this year.

Attorney Jeffrey Swaney was at the Social Security office representing another client when Marcella's case was called.

"I was sitting in the waiting room when they called her. I knew it was an appeal, and I remember thinking, 'How could this woman have been denied?' You could see she was profoundly disabled," he said.

Later that afternoon, Swaney got a phone call from Lisa. She had seen his ad in the Yellow Pages about Social Security disability claims.

"She said her aunt had just had an appeal and had been denied and she started describing it, and I said, 'I was sitting right behind you.'"

So Swaney took the case. He said the problem was a lack of medical documentation.

Incidentally, by this time, Marcella had suffered a series of strokes. She had difficulty speaking. She had to use a cane to walk.

A hearing was scheduled for August.

By then, Marcella was in the nursing home. A doctor from the nursing home wrote that she would never be able to return to the second-story condominium. Lisa and Marcella felt confident that Marcella would finally be approved for disability.

The administrative law judge declared there was not enough information upon which to base a decision. He gave Swaney 30 days to gather more information.

Swaney told me he sent in the additional information this past week. He said he felt optimistic.

I visited Marcella on Friday. Because her speech is slurred, Lisa was there to help interpret for me. Marcella said she has gone through her entire savings since she last worked two years ago. After she exhausted her savings, she began living on a credit card. She is about maxed out, she said. ...

When I got back to the newspaper, I called Swaney. I said I was surprised the judge needed more medical records. Marcella clearly seemed disabled to me, I said.

"If she's faking it," he said, 'she should be an Academy Award-winning actress."

New Hearing Office And Keeping A Committment

The Newton Citizen reports that Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue was in Covington, GA yesterday to open a new hearing office there. That is Regional Chief Administrative Law Judge Oliver Garmon with Astrue. According to the paper's caption for the photo, "Garmon had his head shaved earlier that morning to keep the commitment he made to go bald should his region reduce the wait time for appeals hearings to one year."

Commissioner Astrue and I have no choice on the baldness thing.

Fayetteville Hearing Office

Since I have started posting about the new Social Security hearing office opening in Fayetteville, NC, I suppose I will just keep posting updates until the office is fully open. The office was supposed to open in February 2010. The picture is of the building where the office is to be located and it is recent. However, the office has now opened at a temporary location not far away. It remains unclear whether any hearings will be held at the temporary location.

Update: I hear that the new office is not yet ready to handle electronic files, that for now all their cases will be paper files. I guess this is the sort of start-up problem that Mr. Sklar warned about last week. Local attorneys are struggling with an even more basic start-up problem at the moment. We do not know the telephone number of the new office. Even with the problems, we are happy to have the office open. It has been needed for at least 20 years.

Congressional Hearing Scheduled

The House Social Security Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for September 30 on "protecting and preserving Social Security for generations." No word yet on the witness list.

Why Are My Disability Benefits Ending Now?

Binder and Binder Lawsuit

I have posted on the separate Social Security Perspectives blog the complaint filed by Binder and Binder seeking to force the Social Security Administration to allow Binder and Binder employees to appear at hearings before Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) solely by video. The ALJ would be in one location, the claimant in another and the Binder and Binder employee in a third location. So far, Social Security has refused to allow this as a general matter.

From The NOSSCR Conference -- IV

Glenn Sklar, Social Security's Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR,) spoke yesterday at the semi-annual conference of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) in Chicago. Here are some points from his presentation:

• ODAR has now cleared almost all cases that have been pending more than 825 days.
• ODAR's virtual screening units will continue through at least the end of fiscal year (FY) 2011 (September 30, 2011).
• Several new hearing offices will open in the near future but no mention was made of the new office that I care the most about, the one in Fayetteville, NC.
  
• Sklar warned that the new hearing offices will have a lot of new employees who will make a lot of mistakes. He prefers that these mistakes be sorted out at the local hearing offices or the regional offices rather than at his level.
• ODAR has opened two new hearing assistance offices, a large one in St. Louis and a smaller one in McLean, VA, to help with "pulling" exhibits and writing decisions.
• Going into the NOSSCR Conference there were 491 people who represent Social Security claimants who were active users of Social Security's efolders, which give online access to claimant files. 248 more users were signed up during the NOSSCR Conference up to the point at which Sklar spoke. Presumably, more have signed up since.
• By mid-November Social Security hopes to start signing up attorneys and other representatives for efolder access at hearing offices. Social Security's goal is to sign up 500 a month for a year. [Two points on this: I did not get the impression that Sklar was completely confident that his agency will accomplish this. Second, would you make up your mind what this is called? It has been called EDIB, electronic filel, efiles and efolders and maybe other names. It is time to decide on a name and stick to it!]
• Sklar was asked about attorney's office staff accessing efolder records. There has been concern that it may be Social Security's view that only attorneys could access the records. Sklar said that he was aware that many attorneys were using workarounds to allow their staffs to access the efolders and that Social Security's Office of General Counsel was working on the problem. [I think there are enough real problems at Social Security that the agency does not need to waste its time on something as silly and theoretical as this. The tone of Sklar's voice suggested that he might agree with me.]
  
• CDs being given to those who represent Social Security claimants who lack efolder access will soon be encrypted. Sklar said these would be easy to use. [I am glad that I have efolder access.]
  
• Sklar seemed surprised at a question from the audience about decisions and other correspondence from hearing offices arriving at attorneys' offices a week or ten days after the date they were supposedly mailed. This has happened since Social Security centralized printing and mailing. [Sklar's surprise surprised me. I am just about certain this is a national problem.]
• Sklar was asked about allowing attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants to appear on a three way video linkup. This would allow someone to represnet a Social Security disabisity claimant without ever meeting them. Sklar said that this issue was being litigated in the Eastern District of New York and that he could not comment. [This confirms a rumor that Binder and Binder has sued over this issue. I will write more on this subject next week. I will say for now that I am extremely unsympathetic to Binder and Binder's position.]
  

From The NOSSCR Conference -- III

Nancy Shor, the long time executive director of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) spoke at the organization's conference in Chicago yesterday. Here are a few points from what she had to say:

• She understands that the proposed regulations that would recognize law firms and other entities as representing Social Security claimants are now dead. She does not understand why.
• Ms. Shor has resigned from the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panels (OIDAP). She felt that she had to after NOSSCR adopted a position statement opposing Social Security going ahead with its own occupational information system, something that OIDAP wants to do.
• She expects a new report from OIDAP by the end of the year.