Officials Fight To Keep Social Security Office Open

     From WIBX:

After the Social Security Administration office in Rome [NY] announced plans to close and relocate to Utica, several high ranking officials teamed up to stop it from happening.Rome Mayor Joe Fusco, Senator Chuck Schumer, Congressman Richard Hanna, State Senator Joe Griffo and Assemblymen Anthony Brindisi, all say they joined forces to help area seniors maintain their access to critical benefits. ...

The officials were able to reach an agreement to keep the office open for the next three months. During that time a pilot program will be implemented to measure the cost benefit of keeping the office open indefinitely. Schumer says he’s also asking the Social Security Administration for its economic justification for wanting to close shop and relocate. ...

For the next three months, the office will be open one day a week until a final agreement is reached.

Chief ALJ Bans Mandatory Prehearing Orders

And for those of you who cannot access Scribd, read it here.
CALJ Memo on Prehearing Orders

     When I post a document using Scribd, I usually get messages indicating that access to Scribd is blocked for those accessing the internet through Social Security's domain. For those of you accessing this at work at Social Security, are you able to see the document above at all or is the problem just with going further by going to Scribd itself or trying to download the document? I can't tell how serious the problem is since I'm not on Social Security's network. I don't know why access to Scribd would be blocked. Scribd isn't aspiring to be Wikileaks. It's just a useful service.

On A Collision Course

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the disability examiners who make determinations on disability claims for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration levels, has issued its Spring 2012 newsletter. Here's an excerpt from a summary of a meeting between the NADE Board and several Social Security officials:

SSA [Social Security Administration and the DDS [Disability Determination Services] can expect a continued decrease in the national budget.  All departments, including SSA, are facing an across the board funding cut of nine percent (9%) next fiscal year barring a legislative change in the law.  The projections is that close to 3,000 DDS employees have been lost since Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 to attrition with only the ability to hire 200 critically needed employees nationwide. The loss of each examiner equates to a loss of work on 600 claims. ...  Last FY the DDS had 59,000 staged claims awaiting assignment [to a disability examiner]. Currently there are 106,000 staged claims and SSA anticipates there will be 170,000 staged claims by the end of this fiscal year [September 30, 2012]. The Continuing Disability Review (CDR) workload has been set at 435,000 for FY 2012 with the potential for a dramatic increase for CDRs next fiscal year, depending upon the  budget.

      Note the inherent conflict between doing Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) to determine whether claimants are still disabled and doing reviews of new disability claims. Congress has ordered that there be great increases in the number of CDRs at a time when the agency is not being given enough funds to review new disability claims. Inevitably, this creates a large and constantly increasing backlog of new claims awaiting adjudication. This conflict may become dramatically worse next year because Social Security may be forced to do dramatically more CDRs next year with a dramatically lower appropriation.

Fee Payment Numbers

     Below are updated numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and others who represent Social Security claimants. These payments come out of the back benefits of the claimants. Since the attorneys get paid at the same time as the claimants, this is an indication of how quickly or how slowly Social Security is able to get benefit payments out to claimants after they have been approved. Note the dramatic change between January and February.

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-12	29,926	89,749,312.99
Feb-12	43,946	134,207,416.10
Mar-12	47,376	139,571,577.57

$200?

     From KPBS:

A National City [California] psychologist was arrested and charged today on suspicion of completing and selling immigration and Social Security forms falsely stating that his patients had a medical disability. 

Dr. Roberto J. Velasquez, 55, was charged with making false statements in immigration documents and applications for Supplemental Security Income disability benefits. ...


For a fee of $200, Velasquez would provide a form falsely stating that a person qualified for a medical disability exception, even though the person had no actual disability, according to the affidavit. 

Velasquez was also completing medical reports for people seeking to file applications for Social Security Administration's Supplemental Security Income program, authorities said. Velasquez would falsely state that those people had a medical disability, according to the affidavit.

      I've been representing Social Security disability claimants for more than 30 years and this is the first time I've heard of this happening. I expect it's happened but it's certainly uncommon.  It's not hard to understand why it's rare. Note that the psychologist is alleged to have charged only $200. That's not much money to get in return for prostituting yourself as well as risking jail and the loss of your professional license but that's about all you could hope to get for doing this because the claimants involved are so poor. You'd have to be pretty desperate or depraved or stupid to do it.

Rate Of Retirment And Disability Claims Drops In 2011

     From the Urban Institute:

After peaking in the wake of the Great Recession, Social Security retirement and disability awards fell in 2011 as the economy improved. Only 27 percent of Americans age 62 and older began collecting retirement benefits that year, the lowest take-up rate since 1976. Disability applications and awards remained unusually high, however. In 2011, 18.9 insured workers per 1,000 applied for Social Security disability benefits, more than in any year except 2010.

     Below are a couple of charts from the report

:

Tell Me About Sharepoint

     I notice that this blog gets some hits from Social Security's Intranet Sharepoint platform. Sharepoint is collaborative software which can be used either on an Intranet or over the Internet with password access. Sharepoint looks like it might be useful software for many organizations. How widespread is access to Sharepoint within Social Security? Does everyone have access to the whole thing or are there layers of access? How well does it work? Does most people like participating? How hard is it to set up a new collaborative effort within Sharepoint? Do you think it would be useful software for a professional group?

One Little Thing Not Mentioned In Yesterday's Press Release

     In addition to partially duplicating and to some extent contradicting Social Security's Listing of Impairments, the additions to the Compassionate Allowance list announced yesterday won't even be effective until August 13, 2012, a point that was not mentioned in the press release. What was the point of announcing a policy that won't even be in effect for more than three months?

     Once Social Security gets a new Commissioner next year this whole compassionate allowance thing needs to get folded into the Listings. That's what the Listings are for. If the Listings were inadequate, they should have been amended. There was no need to add another layer on top of the Listings. It's just confusing to those who have to administer the program.