Is The Actuarial Reduction Still Fair?

     Full retirement age for Social Security benefits is currently 66. This will soon start rising to 67. Most people go on Social Security retirement benefits before their full retirement age, a key fact that is usually lost when politicians talk of raising the retirement age. Those who go on retirement benefits before their full retirement age receive reduced benefits. This is called the actuarial reduction. This actuarial reduction was 20% when the full retirement age was 65 and is going up to 25% when the full retirement age reaches 67. Alicia Munnell and Steven Sass at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College ask whether the actuarial reduction, which was first enacted more than 50 years ago, remains appropriate. Their conclusion is that it remains pretty close to actuarial equivalence. Their study is flawed, however, by the fact that they pretended that full retirement age was still 65. I don't understand why they did that. They certainly know what the current full retirement age is and doing the projections for full retirement age being 67 should not have been that difficult.

2011 Workload Data

From Social Security via the NOSSCR newsletter.

PEBES Suspension Criticized

     Michael Hiltzik writes in his column in the Los Angeles Times about Social Security's suspension of sending out Personal Earnings And Benefit Estimate Statements (PEBES). He thinks the suspension is a terrible idea.

Taking Out The Meat Cleaver

From the Associated Press:

[Greek] Health Ministry officials say nearly one-in-six disability allowances will be canceled at the end of the month after discovering thousands of payments were based on false claims — including of drivers registered as being legally blind and bogus cases of leprosy.

Astrue Interview

     The IBM Center for the Business of Government interviewed Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue for its show on WFED radio last week. You can hear and view the interview below. There is not much new to the interview. I am incredulous at Astrue's hope that health information technology improvements will cause the length of time needed to get a hearing before a Social Security Administrative Law Judge to decrease or that these improvements will even allow the elimination of reconsideration. I see no connection at all. The problem is lack of resources at Social Security. Speeding up the acquisition of medical records does little to help.

OIG Report On SSA Reviews Of ALJ Decisions

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has done a report on Social Security's efforts to review Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) decisions. The report makes it clear that it is impossible for Social Security to target individual ALJs for review. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) would have to be changed before Social Security could do that. 

     The APA is one of the proudest achievements of American legal thinking. Amending it to allow targeting of ALJs isn't going to happen. The APA is fundamental to American government. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have any interest in touching the APA.

Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

     Here's the witness list for today's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee, with my description of one's witness' testimony:

PANEL 1:

The Honorable Michael J. Astrue
Commissioner, Social Security Administration
Testimony


PANEL 2:

Trudy Lyon-Hart
Director, Office of Disability Determination Services, Vermont Agency of Human Services, on behalf of the National Council of Disability Determination Directors
Testimony

Lisa D. Ekman
Senior Policy Advisor, Health & Disability Advocates on behalf of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Social Security Task Force
Testimony

Dan Bertoni
Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Testimony

Leighton Chan, M.D. Chief, Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health
Testimony 

• If I hear one more person involved in rehabilitation talking about "shifting paradigms" I think I'm going to start throwing things. Dr. Chan talked about a project he is working on "to create a real time functional assessment that is rapid, reliable and objective. This project assesses the feasibility of developing Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) instruments that could be considered for integration into the SSA’s disability evaluation processes. CAT methodology, coupled with Item Response Theory (IRT), is used to measure outcomes precisely across the full continuum of human functioning. IRT/CAT represents a simple form of artificial intelligence software requiring a computer for administration." I will not bore my readers with a full description of IRT/CAT except to say that the idea that it has anything to offer to disability determination is laughable from any point of view.

Nicole Maestas, Ph.D.
Senior Economist, RAND Corporation
Testimony

Tough Sledding At The Supreme Court

     It sounds like it was tough sledding at the Supreme Court for the attorney arguing for Social Security children's benefits for twins conceived after the death of their father using frozen sperm.