New Homepage For Social Security

The Social Security Administration unveiled its new homepage today.

It looks less cluttered to me. What do you think?

Senate Hearing In Ohio

The Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs held a hearing today in Akron, Ohio. Here are the prepared remarks:

Witnesses

Panel 1

• The Honorable Michael Astrue [view testimony]
  Commissioner
  Social Security Administration
• The Honorable Patrick P. O'Carroll, Jr. [view testimony]
  Inspector General
  Social Security Administration

Panel 2

• Mr. Richard Warsinskey [view testimony]
  Cleveland Downtown District Office Manager and Past President
  National Council of Social Security Management Associations
• Mr. Randy Frye [view testimony]
  President
  Association of Administrative Law Judges

Wednesday Is Final Day For Comments On Proposed Changes To Mental Impairments Listings

Wednesday, November 17 is the final day for comments to be made upon Social Security's Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) that would alter its mental illness listings used in determining disability. Over 1,200 comments have already been filed. Most seem to have been inspired by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). You can see their recommended comments at the NAMI website.

Comments may be made online. Here are the instructions sent out by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives for filing comments online:

SSA strongly recommends submission of comments via the eRulemaking portal at www.regulations.gov. On that site, follow these directions:

• Click on "submit a comment"
• In the space for "Enter keyword of ID," type in: SSA-2007-0101. Then click on "Search."
• One result should appear - the SSA mental disorders NPRM. On the right side, click on "Submit a Comment."
• Complete the form. It allows you to type in a comment (2000 characters maximum) or attach a document. To attach a document, first you "browse" and then must click on "attach."

NOSSCR's own comments are an excellent resource to use in preparing your comment since they include essentially all of the objections that people have made to the NPRM.

ALJs Complain Of Threats

From the Associated Press:

Judges who hear Social Security disability cases are facing a growing number of violent threats from claimants angry over being denied benefits or frustrated at lengthy delays in processing claims.

There were at least 80 threats to kill or harm administrative law judges or staff over the past year — an 18 percent increase over the previous reporting period, according to data collected by the agency.

The data was released to the Association of Administrative Law Judges and made available to The Associated Press. ...

A Senate subcommittee is expected to hear testimony on Monday at a field hearing in Akron, Ohio, about the rising number of threats, as well as the status of the massive backlog in applications for disability benefits, which are available to people who can't work because of medical problems.

Why Didn't You Do This Before The Election?

From CNN Money:

When House Democrats return to Washington on Monday, a top priority will be putting a $250 dollar check in the mail to 58 million Social Security recipients.

Democrats plan to vote early in the lame-duck session on a bill that would provide Social Security recipients with a one-time payment, according to the office of Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat from North Dakota who authored the legislation.

Concerns Over Proposed Mental Illness Listings Changes

From the Chicago Tribune:

Deep inside a 34-page proposed federal regulation are a few sentences that are causing nightmares for mental health advocacy groups.

The regulation, from the Social Security Administration, could change how people with mental illnesses are evaluated for disability payments.

The angst is over whether standardized testing will be required to determine such payments. The proposed regulation is not clear on that controversial subject. At one point is says standardized tests will not be required but then goes into detail on how the exams would be used to determine a person's fitness for work.

The confusion over the wording — and fears that it will be interpreted to require testing — has advocates by the hundreds calling in comments to the Social Security Administration, which will accept them until Wednesday....

"We don't have good tests for this, and the way they are describing how the tests would be used suggests the goal and likely effect is to dramatically reduce the number of people who are eligible for disability," said Mark Heyrman of the Mental Health Summit, a Chicago-based advocacy group. ...

Tom Yates, an attorney with Chicago's Health and Disability Advocates, has a benign interpretation of the proposed rules. He thinks Social Security wants only to clarify its expectations for the few times a standardized test might be used in a mental illness disability claim.

For the record, I have only mild concerns about this aspect of the proposal. In my mind there is a more serious problem that has to do with substituting the word "and" for the word "or." I will write more about this in the near future.

CBO Study On Social Security Disability

From a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Study(footnotes omitted):

Between 1970 and 2009, the number of people receiving DI benefits more than tripled, from 2.7 million to 9.7 million. That jump, which significantly outpaced the increase in the working-age population during that period, is attributable to several changes—in characteristics of that population, in federal policy, and in opportunities for employment. In addition, during those years, the average inflation-adjusted cost per person receiving DI benefits rose from about $6,900 to about $12,800 (in 2010 dollars). As a result, inflation-adjusted expenditures for the DI program, including administrative costs, increased nearly sevenfold between 1970 and 2009, climbing from $18 billion to $124 billion (in 2010 dollars). Most DI beneficiaries, after a two-year waiting period, are also eligible for Medicare; the cost of those benefits in fiscal year 2009 totaled about $70 billion.

Under current law, the DI program is not financially sustainable. ... Without legislative action to reduce the DI program’s outlays, increase its dedicated federal revenues, or transfer other federal funds to it, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will not have the legal authority to pay full DI benefits beyond [2018].

NOSSCR Comments On Mental Impairments Listings Changes

The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) has posted its comments on the proposed changes to Social Security's Mental Impairment Listings. Here are a few excerpts:

II. “B” Criteria Issues ...
[W]e have a significant concern about the language change in paragraph B3, which also applies to the newly proposed paragraph B1. As discussed below, SSA should use the word “or,” rather than “and.”

The NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rule-Making] proposes to change paragraph B to read as follows:

B. Marked limitations of two or extreme limitation of one of the following mental abilities:”
1. “Ability to understand, remember, and apply information”;
2. “Ability to interact with others”;
3. “Ability to concentrate, persist, and maintain pace”; and
4. “Ability to manage oneself.”

In the preamble to the NPRM, SSA explains the change from “or” to “and,” stating that it is not a substantive change from current policy, “but only a clarification of the overall requirement” ...

We are concerned that changing “or” to “and” in the actual listing could be misinterpreted as a change in policy that would set a higher standard so that a claimant would be required to demonstrate limitation in each of the three components of the proposed B1 or B3 criteria. We do not believe that this is what SSA intends by the proposed change in light of the statement above in the preamble ...

C. Use of standardized test scores and “standard deviations”

SSA proposes to incorporate provisions from the childhood SSI functional equivalence regulation, 20 C.F.R. § 416.926a(e), regarding the definition of “marked” and “extreme.” See 75 Fed. Reg. at 51342. This results in SSA defining “marked” and “extreme” in terms of standardized testing and standard deviations below the mean. Under this change, an individual could be found to have a “marked limitation” in one of the paragraph B criteria with a score that is at least two, but less than three, standard deviations below the mean on an individually administered standardized test designed to measure that ability. The individual could be found to have an “extreme limitation” with a score that is three standard deviations below the mean. ...

This is a flawed approach which should not be used in the listings for either adults or children with mental health disorders because, to date, no standardized instruments have been developed which measure the specific functions in the B criteria and are widely accepted by professionals in the field of assessment. ...

V. Listing 12.05: Intellectual Disability/Mental Retardation (ID/MR) ...
Claimants’ representatives know first-hand that some adjudicators will ignore or give less weight to IQ test scores if the adjudicators subjectively believe that the claimant’s functioning is inconsistent with the test score, even if there is no basis for rejecting the validity of the test score. We question this practice. The proposed criteria could support the practice of some state agencies and ALJs who deny cases because the claimant can cook, take care of personal needs, care for children, or shows some other skill or strength.

Comments on the NPRM must be filed by November 17.