Hatch Plans To Investigate

From the Wall Street Journal:

Sen. Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he planned to investigate high award rates by some Social Security administrative law judges following a front-page article on government disability benefits in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.

“An already broke Social Security disability program is being further threatened by a system that appears to be overly generous in giving out benefits to those who might not deserve them,” Mr. Hatch said in a statement. “This is a serious problem that needs to be examined.  I will be investigating this matter to determine the scope and cause of these improper payments.”

As a minority member of the Committee Hatch cannot schedule a hearing on his own. An actual hearing might not be so easy to do even if he were the Committee chair. What do you do, subpoena the offending Administrative Law Judge and try to beat up on him? That might not come across quite that well.

Office Closing In New York

From the Forest Hills, NY Patch:

Starting this summer, residents looking for help from the Rego Park social security office may have to wait in longer lines than they are used to.

The Social Security Administration is proposing to close its Glendale office, sending the people who patronize the office to other locations in the city — most likely Rego Park or Cypress Hills in Brooklyn. ...
“We have had to make this difficult decision because Congress significantly cut our administrative budget,” said John Shallman, spokesman for the SSA. “The consolidation of these two offices and all their employees into existing leased office space near public transportation will have a projected cost savings of nearly $3 million over the next ten years.”

High Reversing ALJ Draws WSJ Attention

From the Wall Street Journal:

Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits will often appeal to one of 1,500 judges who help administer the program, where the odds of winning are slightly better than even. Unless, that is, they come in front of David B. Daugherty.
In the fiscal year that ended in September, the administrative law judge, who sits in the impoverished intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, decided 1,284 cases and awarded benefits in all but four. For the first six months of fiscal 2011, Mr. Daugherty approved payments in every one of his 729 decisions, according to the Social Security Administration. ...

Mr. Daugherty is a standout in a judicial system that has lost its way, say numerous current and former judges. Judges say their jobs can be arduous, protecting the sometimes divergent interests of the applicant and the taxpayer. Critics blame the Social Security Administration, which oversees the disability program, charging that it is more interested in clearing a giant backlog than ensuring deserving candidates get benefits. Under pressure to meet monthly goals, some judges decide cases without a hearing. Some rely on medical testimony provided by the claimant's attorney.
This breakdown is one reason why Social Security Disability Insurance—one of the federal government's two disability programs—is under severe financial strain. It paid a record $124 billion in benefits in 2010 and is on track to become the first major entitlement program to go bust. Government officials said last week it is expected to run out of money in 2018. ...

Judges and local attorneys have complained about the volume of disability cases brought before Judge Daugherty by one lawyer, Eric C. Conn. ...

When asked about Mr. Daugherty, Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue said in an interview there were several "outliers" among administrative law judges, but that he has no power to intervene because their independence is protected by federal law. ...

Following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, the Social Security Administration's inspector general's office launched an investigation into Mr. Daugherty's approval rate, according to several people briefed on the matter.  ...

Judges and staff in the Huntington office have complained to supervisors that Mr. Daugherty assigns himself Mr. Conn's cases, including some that were assigned to other judges, two former judges and several staff said. Cases are supposed to be assigned randomly.
According to a court schedule of Mr. Daugherty's day reviewed by The Wall Street Journal dated Feb. 22, 2006, Mr. Daugherty held 20 hearings spaced 15 minutes apart for Mr. Conn and his clients in a Prestonsburg, Ky., field office.

Port Jervis Loses Service

 From the Times Herald-Record of the Hudson Valley in New York:

Port Jervis seniors who need to speak with a Social Security representative are now going to have to travel to another location or become computer savvy.

Regular visits on the third Tuesday of each month by a Social Security rep to the Port Jervis Municipal Building — which has for years given folks a convenient way to get help — has been suspended indefinitely because of federal budget cuts, city officials say.

Update: Port Jervis is getting its service restored.

Actually, I Think He May Have A Few Loose Screws

From the Washington Times:

A key senator has asked the Social Security Administration to investigate how people who live their lives role-playing as “adult babies” are able to get taxpayer-funded disability payments - after one of them was featured on a recent reality TV episode wearing diapers, feeding from a bottle and using an adult-sized crib he built.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and the Senate’s top waste-watcher, asked the agency’s inspector general to look into 30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr. and his roommate, Sandra Dias, who acts as his “mother,” saying it’s not clear why they are collecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits instead of working.

“Given that Mr. Thornton is able to determine what is appropriate attire and actions in public, drive himself to complete errands, design and custom-make baby furniture to support a 350-pound adult and run an Internet support group, it is possible that he has been improperly collecting disability benefits for a period of time,” Mr. Coburn wrote in a letter Monday to Inspector General Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr. ...

Mr. Thornton was featured in early May on National Geographic Channel’s “Taboo” program along with Miss Dias, a former nurse who feeds him a bottle and otherwise attends to his needs when he is dressed in diapers.

In the episode, he shows off the adult-sized crib he built and sleeps in, and the cameras follow him to the hardware store where he buys wood for his latest do-it-yourself project - an elevated high chair that is capable of holding his ample frame. ...

Mr. Coburn also questions why Miss Dias, as a former nurse, collects SSI benefits, “since she is able to provide childcare” to Mr. Thornton.

Rep Payee Problem In Arizona

Two Tucson brothers who operated a service that managed Social Security checks for the elderly and disabled pleaded guilty for their roles in a $1.3 million embezzlement case.

Robert Lee Skaggs, 57, and Ray T. Skaggs, 42, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy, mail fraud and conversion of security payee funds, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release.

The brothers, along with their sister Jo Ann Skaggs, operated SCOPE payee services, which paid bills and distributed social security money for recipients not able to manage their own expenses.

Putting It In Context

From Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writing at the Huffington Post:

There was both good news and bad news in the Social Security trustees' report released last week. The bad news is that the program is projected to cost somewhat more in the latest report than in the 2010 report. ...

This bad news about the program is also the good news. The main reason that the program's finances deteriorated between the 2010 report and the 2011 report is that in the 2011 report the trustees assumed that we would enjoy substantially longer life expectancies than they did in the 2010 report.

They increased their projected life expectancy for men turning age 65 in 2010 from 18.1 years to 18.6 years, a gain of 0.5 years. The trustees increased their projected life expectancy for women turning age 65 by 0.3 years. ...

Even accepting the 2011 report at face value the picture is hardly as dire as many politicians in Washington are claiming. We have seen much worse before. For example in 1997, the trustees projected a shortfall that was equal to 2.23 percent of payroll. At that time, their projections showed the trust fund first being depleted in 2029. ...

It is also important to keep the Social Security numbers in context. Proponents of cuts to Social Security have spent fortunes on pollsters and focus groups trying to put the program's finances in the most dire possible light. They are fond of reporting things like the program's $17.9 trillion shortfall over the infinite horizon. ...

The vast majority of this $17.9 trillion shortfall comes in years after 2200. Social Security does have a long planning period, but if anyone thinks that we are actually making policy for the 24th century then we should keep this person far removed from the levers of power. ...

The best way to make the size of the projected Social Security shortfall understandable is to put it in context. Relative to the size of the economy, the projected Social Security shortfall is equal to 0.7 percent of GDP. By comparison, annual spending on the military increased by more than 1.6 percentage points of GDP between 2000 and 2011. So the burden imposed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are almost 2.5 times larger than the money that would be needed to eliminate the Social Security shortfall. ...

To take another point of reference, the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Ryan Medicare privatization plan implied that it would increase the cost of buying Medicare-equivalent policies by more than $34 trillion, a sum that is almost five times as large as the projected Social Security shortfall.

Schizophrenia And Social Security

I have been seeing more and more people contacting me who have been denied Social Security disability benefits even though they are schizophrenic. I have talked with other attorneys in North Carolina who tell me that they have seen the same thing. I have not seen disability claims based upon schizophrenia denied in a long time, more than 25 years. Social Security for many years that schizophrenia is such a devastating illness that any virtually every schizophrenic ought to be approved.

So what has changed? It's not been a change in the treatment of schizophrenia. There's no cure. Schizophrenia cannot be managed in the way that bipolar disorder can be managed for many people. The best that can be achieved with schizophrenia is to control the positive symptoms, the hallucinations and delusions, but treatment hardly touches the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, such as "inexpressive faces, blank looks, monotone and monosyllabic speech, few gestures, seeming lack of interest in the world and other people, inability to feel pleasure or act spontaneously." That may sound a little vague but it is very real and very disabling.

If something has changed in disability claims based upon schizophrenia, it is at Social Security. Social Security never announces these things. In fact, they always deny that they have made any change. They "announce" the change secretly using their quality assurance program. Disability Determination Services (DDS) tries to approve someone at the initial or reconsideration level, the case is subjected to quality assurance review and gets sent back because the quality assurance people did not like paying that person. Once DDS gets several returns on the same issue, they gets the picture and cut back on approving people who present that particular situation without Social Security every acknowledging that anything has changed.

Take a look below at a quality assurance return that I have seen in a client's file recently. I have redacted the identifying information. Don't try to blame it on the diagnosis of "schizophreniform disorder" instead of schizophrenia? That's technical, because the young woman in question hadn't demonstrated her symptoms for six months. Since that time, predictably, her symptoms have continued unabated. DDS got the message from this return. They got updated clinic records which showed the continuation of the same problems and they turned her down. That's why her mother called me.

I find this depressing. What do you think?

Schizophrenia