Lockdown In Baltimore

From CBS Baltimore:

The Social Security Administration facility is on lockdown after a robbery and shooting near its headquarters in Baltimore County.

The robbery did not occur on the campus of the Social Security Administration, but SSA was notified because the suspect has not yet been apprehended.

Baltimore County Police were called to Woodlawn Drive and Parallel Road at 11:43 a.m. Monday. They are on the scene of a shooting in the woods near Walden Circle. 

Police say the victim, an adult male, has suffered non life-threatening injuries and will be transported to Sinai Hospital.

The suspect was last seen running down Woodlawn Drive.

Update: OK, it's over.

You Ought To Read This

     Heather Kovich, a physician, has written an article for Guernica, a magazine, based on her experiences performing consultative examinations for Social Security. It is well-written. Indeed, it is so well-written that it should be appearing in a more prominent publication. It would fit nicely within the covers of the New Yorker. Kovich writes about people she has come to know who are affected by disability and their interaction with Social Security. Disability issues are frequently discussed in the press and in Congress by people who have little experience with actual disabled people. For a refreshing change this article about disability is written by someone who has gone to the trouble of actually getting to know some disabled people. I thought about putting some excerpts here but I could not give even the flavor of the piece within quoting far more than the copyright laws allow, so you'll just have to go to the Guernica site and read it.

A Shameless Promotion

The new edition of my book, Social Security Disability Practice, has been released.

I'm Not Buying Your Arguments

     I am getting feedback from Social Security employees to the effect that the House Republican draft of an appropriations bill covering Social Security sounds OK to them. As I understand it, their argument goes like this:

• Social Security gets more money. That is good for this fiscal year and it increases the baseline for future years, which would be even better.
• Social Security would be able to do more Supplemental Security Income (SSI) redeterminations and Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs). Both need doing.
• With the additional money, Social Security would be able to avoid furloughing employees. This may be the most important consideration for Social Security employees.

     That is all true and I agree with these points. I cannot blame anyone for wanting to avoid a furlough. However, there are other important considerations that lead me to believe the House draft bill would be bad news for the public. Here are my concerns:

• The draft bill would give more money to Social Security but would require that a huge portion of all the money appropriated to Social Security be spent on SSI redeterminations and CDRs. This would reduce the money available to be spent on everything else that Social Security is supposed to do. This will cause increased backlogs and poorer service generally.
• The money could not be spent wisely on SSI redeterminations and CDRs in the approximately nine month time period that would be left in the fiscal year by the time an appropriation is agreed to and Social Security can start to implement the appropriation. I am pretty sure that Social Security does not currently have enough personnel trained in SSI redeterminations to do all that would be required. Personnel would have to be retrained. That takes time. By the time the people get trained, the fiscal year would be about over. Disability Determination Services (DDS) personnel could do the CDRs but anyone who is cut off benefits gets the right to a reconsideration hearing. These hearings are not before Administrative Law Judges but before DDS hearing officers. There are few DDS hearing officers. Many more would be needed. It would take months to train all the needed personnel. By the time this is done, the fiscal year would be over and there would be a huge backlog of CDRs awaiting reconsideration hearings.

     If I am not understanding the proposal, please correct me, but it looks to me like the result would be a wasteful crash program that would accomplish little in the short run except to make backlogs at Social Security much worse. That would be poor public policy. Avoiding furloughs of Social Security employees is an important consideration but not be the only consideration.
     Social Security should be given the time to ramp up to do the increased SSI redeterminations and CDRs in an orderly fashion that doesn't trash everything else the agency is supposed to be doing.

The Wall Street Journal Reports On The End Of The Fiscal Year Anomaly

From Damian Paletta at the Wall Street Journal (the rest of this is behind a subscription wall):

Managers in the Social Security Administration, struggling to handle a skyrocketing number of disability cases, had an unusual request for their workers this week: slow down. ...

Social Security judges and employees in Florida, Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona were among those instructed to set aside disability cases this week, with the slowdown allowing managers to boost their performance numbers for the coming fiscal year, which starts Monday.

Top officials, in a bid to meet goals to win promotions or thousands of dollars in bonuses, directed many employees to refrain from issuing decisions on cases until next week ..

Update: I have now seen the entire article. Here are a couple of more excerpts:

On Monday, the Social Security Administration's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review closed out 230 cases nationally, compared with the roughly 3,000 it usually averages a day, a government official said. No cases were closed in the SSA's Boston and Denver regions on Monday, that person said, and the Seattle region closed just one case....

On Wednesday, the agency's chief judge, Debra Bice, sent a memo to all judges ordering them to close cases normally.

The Republican Plan For Social Security's Appropriation -- Don't Worry So Much About Putting Anyone Else On Benefits; Just Try To Cut Them Off

     A draft of the House Appropriations Committee's Labor-HHS Appropriations bill (the Social Security part begins at page 122) is out. That bill would give Social Security approximately $12 billion. This seems to compare favorably to the version reported out of the Senate Appropriations Committee which called for only $11.6 billion but not really. The House version specifies that a whopping $896 million would have to be spent on continuing disability reviews and SSI eligibility redeterminations. The Senate bill would appropriate $139.5 million for the more generic category of "program integrity activities." I cannot say exactly how things would work out if the House bill became law. There might be dramatically increasing backlogs, while Disability Determination Services would be working overtime and hiring rapidly to do huge numbers of continuing disability reviews. Basically, the philosophy expressed is "don't worry about putting anyone else on benefits; just find ways to take people off benefits."

      The Hill tells us not to worry that this is going to happen anytime soon since two Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee wants to cut more money from the bill, exactly where being uncertain. Also, the bill as written could not become law since it would make it impossible to spend money to implement the Affordable Care Act and the Senate is not going to agree to that, nor would the President sign it.

     The bottom line is that we should expect a prolonged appropriations dispute which may cause a government shutdown as early as November when the current continuing resolution ends.

New Office in Franklin

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue was in Franklin, TN yesterday for the official opening of a new hearing office, one of eight opening this year.

One User Fee Goes Down

From today's Federal Register:

We provide limited fee-based Social Security number (SSN) verification service to private businesses and other requesters who obtain a valid, signed consent form from the Social Security number holder. ...

To use [this system], interested parties must pay a one-time non-refundable enrollment fee of $5,000. Currently, users also pay a fee of $5.00 per transaction in advance of services. We agreed to calculate our costs periodically for providing [these] services and adjust the fees as needed. ...

Based on the most recent cost analysis, we will adjust the fiscal year 2012 fee to $1.05 per transaction. New customers will still be responsible for the one-time $5,000 enrollment fee.