Quiz

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The Real Problem Is Appeals Council Backlogs

     In the wake of Social Security Ruling 11-1p which seeks to prevent claimants from filing a new claim while an old one is pending before the Appeals Council, I thought I would check on my firm's oldest pending Appeals Council cases. We have one that was filed on January 8, 2009 and another filed on April 28, 2009.
     A claimant is supposed to wait over two and a half years for Appeals Council action without the possibility of filing a new claim? Social Security claims that it is trying to stop an abusive practice, but isn't the real problem the backlog at the Appeals Council? Take that away and there is little incentive to file a new claim while an appeal is pending at the Appeals Council.

     By the way, any numbers you get out of the Appeals Council on their backlogs are misleading. For many years, maybe decades, the Appeals Council has followed a practice of shoving the easy ones out the door as quickly as possible. If an unrepresented claimant files a request for Appeals Council review, it gets denied quickly, at least in Appeals Council terms. If a represented claimant files a request for Appeals Council review but the attorney or representative gives no specific reason for the appeal, it gets denied quickly. However, if the claimant is represented and gives good reasons why the Appeals Council should reverse or remand the case, expect it to take at least a year.

Fair And Balanced Reporting From The AP

From the Associated Press:

Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. ...
"It's primarily economic desperation," Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said in an interview. "People on the margins who get bad news in terms of a layoff and have no other place to go and they take a shot at disability," ...
The disability program "got into trouble first because of liberalization of eligibility standards in the 1980s," said Charles Blahous, one of the public trustees who oversee Social Security. "Then it got another shove into bigger trouble during the recent recession."  ...
Last year, Social Security detected $1.4 billion in overpayments to disability beneficiaries, mostly to people who got jobs and no longer qualified, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Average Retirement Age Increases

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College is reporting that since the mid-1990s the average retirement age for men has increased from 62 to 64 and for women from 60 to 62. The researcher relates this to:

• changing incentives in Social Security and employer pensions;
• better education and health coupled with less strenuous jobs; and
• the decline in retiree health insurance.

Planning For Austerity

From instructions sent out by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House, to all federal agencies:

In light of the tight limits on discretionary spending starting in 2012, your 2013 budget submission to OMB should provide options to support the President's commitment to cut waste and reorder priorities to achieve deficit reduction while investing in those areas critical to job creation and economic growth. Unless your agency has been given explicit direction otherwise by OMB, your overall agency request for 2013 should be at least 5 percent below your 2011 enacted discretionary appropriation. As discussed at the recent Cabinet meetings, your 2013 budget submission should also identify additional discretionary funding reductions that would bring your request to a level that is at least 10 percent below your 2011 enacted discretionary appropriation.

The 2013 federal fiscal year will begin on October 1, 2012.

OIG Report On Representative Video Project

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.

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):

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.

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?