Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a report on the "Representative Video Project" that allows attorneys and other representing Social Security claimants to participate in Social Security hearings using their own video equipment. OIG reports that there has been a problem with public communication about the program, probably because Social Security did not think through what it wanted to accomplish.
Aug 19, 2011
Aug 18, 2011
Social Security Employee Indicted For Defrauding Claimants
From the Los Angeles Times:
A federal grand jury has indicted an employee at the Social Security Administration’s Whittier office on charges that she stole money from beneficiaries.
Gezal Rebbecca Duran, 32, of Pomona was indicted Tuesday on four counts of theft by a government employee.
Duran, who worked as a claims representative, allegedly told benefit recipients that they had received overpayments and needed to pay her in order to bring their accounts current. Investigators believe she sole more than $17,000 from at least 15 benefit recipients, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Work Incentives Planning And Assistance
From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
I have seen no evidence on the ground of anything accomplished by these WIPA grantees. Is anyone familiar with anything whatsoever accomplished by these WIPA grantees?From 2006 through 2010, SSA awarded about $93 million in grant funds to 103 grantees to provide work incentives planning and assistance[WIPA] to Disability Insurance and/or Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries. However, the Agency was still unable to show employment outcomes for beneficiaries receiving WIPA services because of the challenges with the quality and accuracy of the beneficiary data collected and reported by WIPA grantees. In addition, SSA did not clearly outline specific performance measurements that defined the level of performance the WIPA grantees were to achieve.
Aug 17, 2011
"38 Life-Altering Mistakes A Day"
From CNN Money:
Of the approximately 2.8 million death reports the Social Security Administration receives per year, about 14,000 -- or one in every 200 deaths -- are incorrectly entered into its Death Master File, which contains the Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, death dates, zip codes and last-known residences of more than 87 million deceased Americans. That averages out to 38 life-altering mistakes a day. ..."It is unfortunate, but some of the death data that we post to our records ... proves to be wrong and we correct it as soon as possible," said administration spokesman Mark Hinkle. "Usually the error was inadvertently caused because of a human typing error when death information was entered into a computer system."This inaccurate information is then sold to the public, as well as to banks and credit bureaus.Those who are declared dead not only lose their ability to apply for credit or receive benefits, but they are also at a high risk for identity theft now that all of their personally-identifying information has been made public.In one review, the Inspector General found that months after the Social Security Administration deleted incorrect information from the database, the personally identifiable information of 28% of the individuals was still publicly available on at least one other web site.
Answer To Quiz
People had trouble with this one!
Question: Mr. A drives while intoxicated. He causes a terrible car crash which kills the driver of another vehicle. Mr. A is convicted of vehicular homicide, a felony under state law. He is sentenced to two years in prison. He serves those two years in prison. After he leaves prison, Mr. A files a claim for Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) and SSI (SSI) since in the same car crash Mr. A was badly and permanently injured. He has no serious health problems other than those related to the car crash. He has no income or resources. Mr. A is potentially eligible for:
Possible answers: Question: Mr. A drives while intoxicated. He causes a terrible car crash which kills the driver of another vehicle. Mr. A is convicted of vehicular homicide, a felony under state law. He is sentenced to two years in prison. He serves those two years in prison. After he leaves prison, Mr. A files a claim for Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) and SSI (SSI) since in the same car crash Mr. A was badly and permanently injured. He has no serious health problems other than those related to the car crash. He has no income or resources. Mr. A is potentially eligible for:
DIB only
SSI only
Both DIB and SSI
Neither DIB nor SSI
The answer is SSI only. 42 U.S.C. §423(d)(6) provides that:
There is no parallel provision in the statute defining disability for purposes of SSI.Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, any physical or mental impairment which arises in connection with the commission by an individual (after the date of the enactment of this paragraph) of an offense which constitutes a felony under applicable law and for which such individual is subsequently convicted, or which is aggravated in connection with such an offense (but only to the extent so aggravated), shall not be considered in determining whether an individual is under a disability.
Customer Service Delivery Plan
Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report recommending that Social Security adopt a long term service delivery plan and by long term they mean ten years.
I have heard this sort of recommendation before. I think it is nonsense. First of all, how do you make a long term plan when you have no idea what sort of appropriation you will have for the next fiscal year much less ten years from now? Second, even if you could predict your appropriation, how do you predict future information technology availability and public usage of that technology.?
The report is based upon a firm conviction that the public's usage of the internet will continue to soar indefinitely and that Social Security must plan for this. That is preposterous. At some point in the near future, internet usage is going to bump into hard barriers. A certain proportion of the population is illiterate or barely literate. There will always be limits on how much that group will use the internet. There are only so many hours in the day that the rest of us will spend on the internet. Internet use does not keep soaring forever.
I can tell you and any experienced field office employee at Social Security can tell you that Social Security is just too complicated and people are just too complicated to make the assumption that the agency's workload can ever be transferred to computers.
Aug 15, 2011
New Claim After Unfavorable ALJ Decision -- What's Going On?
Because of Social Security Ruling 11-1p many claimants will now elect to file only a new claim after an unfavorable decision from an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). My clients who are attempting to do so are encountering a brick wall of resistance from local Social Security field offices. They are being told that they may not file a claim until 60 days have elapsed after an ALJ decision. This potentially costs my clients in this situation two months of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits as well as unnecessary delay. Social Security has not released to the public any instructions that would tell its staff to do what I am seeing. It is unclear to me whether I am seeing only a local phenomenon or whether there are instructions that have not yet been released to the public.
Are attorneys in other parts of the country seeing the same problem in having a claimant file a new claim after an unfavorable ALJ decision? Are there staff instructions that have not been released to the public?
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