ACUS Wants To Study "Duty Of Candor And The Submission Of All Evidence"

     From a Request for Proposals (RFP) announced by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) as best I can tell on July 12:

The Administrative Conference is seeking a consultant to undertake a research project that will consider the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) statutory authority and current regulations regarding the duty of candor and the submission of all evidence in Social Security disability claims. Proposals are due by 6:00 pm Eastern time on July 16, 2012. ...

SSA [Social Security Administration] has requested that the Conference study its statutory authority1 and regulations2 regarding the duty of candor and the submission of all evidence in Social Security disability claims. Specifically, the agency is concerned about reports that some claimants’ representatives routinely withhold from the government, medical records which they believe to be potentially damaging to claimants’ claims.3 Accordingly, the Conference wishes to conduct a focused study of SSA’s statutory authority and current regulations regarding the duty of candor and the submission of all evidence, such as a claimant’s medical records and/or other evidence necessary to accurately develop the record in a non-adversarial proceeding. ...

... [T]he consulting fee has been estimated at $15,000 plus travel and research assistance expenses of $5,000. ...

[Applicants should] Propose a schedule for the project based on the September 2012 deadline for submission of the Office of the Chairman report to SSA. Because this project is under an unusually short time deadline, a draft report, which should be substantially complete and ready for review by the Chairman and Conference staff would be needed by the end of August 2012 and the final report by the middle of September 2012.

     You put out an RFP due four whole days later! How many proposals are you expecting in response? No, I'm not interested in submitting a proposal. Obviously, someone has already been picked for this (probably Harold Krent) and the RFP is just window-dressing. Is this the sort of administrative process that ACUS would recommend to agencies? And what's with the short time for this study? We're about to have a general election and the Commissioner of Social Security is a short-termer. It's not like anything is going to happen on this subject in the near future.

     I written about my concern that ACUS and its leadership have demonstrated that they are pathetically out of touch with reality when it comes to Social Security. I will be surprised if this study is of any help to anyone.
     Maybe the Republicans were right to defund ACUS years ago and Democrats were wrong to resurrect it. Perhaps, ACUS wants to get this study done quickly because it's afraid it will soon be out of business again.

     Update: One commenter has stated that the RFP date had actually been announced on June 8 and that July 16 was an extension of the deadline. I would appreciate it if someone could point me to any PUBLIC announcement of this RFP prior to yesterday. I receive the ACUS online newsletter. I didn't see any sign of this RFP prior to yesterday. I can't seem to find anything on the ACUS website. This is the URL for the RFP itself: http://www.acus.gov/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/07/SSA-Reps-Conduct-Project-RFP-6-21-12.pdf 
      Notice that date of June 21, 2012 at the end of the URL? Why would that date be on there if it had been announced on June 8?
     And, by the way, ACUS didn't announce this on FedBizOpp.gov either.
     Who knew about this prior to yesterday and how did they find out about it? I think it's a reasonable question.

You Can't Rely On The Death Master File

     According to a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) there are 1.2 million deceased Social Security beneficiaries who are not recorded on Social Security's Death Master File. Despite this, it appears that Social Security is generally terminating benefits for most of the 1.2 million anyway. However, this leaves other entities relying on the Death Master File vulnerable, including e-verify checks of new hires.
     This story has been picked up by the Washington Post's Federal Eye column which includes some ridiculous quotes from Senator Tom Coburn.

Iowa Field Office Remains At Risk

    From the Clinton Iowa Herald:

The Social Security Administration office in Clinton is in danger of being closed again. ...

The office ... was on the chopping block four years ago when SSA officials said they would close the office by June 1, 2008, and consolidate operations with the Davenport office.

That merger was ultimately scrapped after elected officials and residents raised concerns about elderly or disabled residents’ travel restrictions and discomfort with 1-800 phone numbers and the Internet.

Few details of the current closure proposal are available. U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, sent a letter to Jewell Colbert, the regional communications director for the Kansas City Regional SSA office, asking for more information. Vulich said he had not received any further explanation of when or why the office is being slated for closure.   ...

While Sandra Bullock Is Filming A Movie In The Area, Dispute Outside Social Security Office Leads To Three People Stabbed, One Fatally

     From the Boston Globe (emphasis added):

A Boston police officer working a security ­detail on the set of a Sandra Bullock movie filming in Dudley Square Tuesday afternoon helped chase down a suspect after three people were stabbed, one fatally, outside a federal office near the location of the film shoot, police said.

Boston police said that the stabbing occurred at Dudley and Washington streets shortly before 2 p.m. and that one of the three male victims, ranging in age from about 17 to 21, later died at Boston Medical Center. The injuries to the other two men were not life-threatening, police said.

A detail officer on the set of “The Heat,” a buddy cop movie starring Bullock and Melissa McCarthy that was filming at Shawmut and Washington streets, helped chase and capture the suspect, who was taken into custody for questioning, police said. ...

Police said Tuesday night in a statement that witnesses indicated the dispute began outside the Social Security Administration office at 10 Malcom X Boulevard.

Threatening To Criminally Prosecute Those Who Help People File Claims Online Doesn't Help

     The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a report giving information about "non-profit third party efforts" to help Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claimants. One major reason for SSAB's interest in these efforts is that this could "free up resources for the agency."
     I think there are some practical things that Social Security could do to increase the help available to SSI claimants, one of them being to stop threatening criminal prosecutions of those who try to help people file claims online, but before we talk about what Social Security could do, let's talk about what's happening now.

     One example of what the SSAB would like to see more of is SOAR (SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access and Recovery). SOAR is a joint project of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). However, while SOAR has other intentions, it has a major goal of reducing local government costs for homeless shelters and indigent medical care by getting  homeless people on SSI, thereby getting them on cash SSI benefits and also getting them on Medicaid. SSAB wants to see more of projects like SOAR so that Social Security's administrative burden can be reduced. It seems like this is like a dog chasing its tail. Wouldn't be it simpler and more direct to just give the Social Security Administration adequate resources so it could help people with their SSI claims instead of trying to encourage other government agencies to spend their money to help people with SSI claims? Trying to find ways to shift costs from one government agency to another is understandable but in the big picture it's inefficient.

     One type of program which SSAB does not mention, perhaps because they are unaware of it or perhaps because it does not fit into their formula, is the effort that many hospitals make to get people on SSI. Why would hospitals do this? It's simple. Uninsured person enters the hospital through the emergency room, is admitted and quickly runs up a bill of tens of thousands of dollars. The same uninsured person may be back in the hospital again before long running up another big bill. The hospital wants to get the uninsured person on SSI because that makes them eligible for Medicaid which means the hospital gets paid tens of thousands of dollars now and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars over the long term. Thus, the hospital hires someone to help the person file and pursue an SSI claim. Again, there is an element of tail chasing here. In a rational society shouldn't the hospital be able to just call Social Security and depend upon them to do the work required to get the claimant on benefits? Since Social Security does not have the staff to do this, the hospital has to step in and spend its money. This amounts to a tax imposed upon the hospital because of inadequate staffing at Social Security.

     I am sure that there are some true volunteer effort to help people with SSI claims but I have not seen or heard of many. I think the reason is that, while it can be emotionally rewarding to help lift a person out of abject poverty, it's also gritty work. It's hard to stay in contact with poor people. They keep moving around. The vast majority of SSI claimants suffer from depression at the least. Many suffer from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. More than a few SSI claimants are unpleasant to deal with. A significant percentage have substance abuse problems. Some of them smell bad and dealing with people who smell bad may be even tougher than it sounds. You're never going to see large numbers of volunteers signing up for this sort of work.

     I can suggest a couple of things that would help reduce Social Security's SSI workload a bit:

• Quit threatening to criminally prosecute those who help people file claims online. Social Security's official position is that while you may help a person fill out claim forms online, the claimant must physically push the "send" button on the computer himself or herself. If you get the information over the telephone and get the claimant's permission to submit the claim and then hit the "send" button, you've just committed fraud in Social Security's view. Of course, Social Security, itself, does the same thing all the time but it's not fraud when their employees do it. This is nuts.
• If Social Security cannot give claimants the help they need, everyone needs to recognize that the only group likely to give expert, sympathetic help on a large scale is attorneys. My firm and others do help people file claims but there is a shortage of attorneys willing to do this. This reason is money. Most attorneys feel like the money just isn't there. They don't think they can make a profit representing claimants at the initial and reconsideration levels, much less helping them file claims. Unless we are willing to look at ways of increasing the financial rewards for helping people file claims, I don't think we'll see much more of it. Is this self-serving? Sure, but I'm just the messenger. It's the marketplace that's saying that the pay for performing this service isn't high enough. More "education" isn't going to solve this problem. More exhortation isn't going to solve the problem. You can't order the problem out of existence. It's time to listen to what the marketplace is saying. I have no particular idea for how this can be done but I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some ideas if the will existed.If we're not going to fund the Social Security Administration adequately, we'd better come up with some ideas.

Doing Less With Less

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make disability determinations on Social Security disability claims at the initial and reconsideration levels, has posted its Summer 2012 newsletter. Here is an excerpt from the President's Message column:

Here is a new concept that is ushering in a new era for the DDS. The concept is this: we must do less with less. It comes from part of a sentence in Deputy Commissioner Colvin's testimony to the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security on January 24, 2012. The context of the statement is this: Our available funding in (FY [Fiscal Year]) 2012 is almost $400 million less than what we operated with in FY 2010. At the same time, our fixed costs and our workloads continued to increase. We lost over 4,000 employees in FY 2011, and we expect to lose over 3,000 more employees this year that we cannot replace. We simply do not have enough staff to complete all of the work for which we are responsible, and we made strategic decisions about the areas in which we must do less with less.

Simply stated there are not enough trained professionals to handle the number of customers coming through the door, through the internet, or wanting service over the phone. Nobody knows that better than we do at the Disability Determination Service. Last March President-Elect Todd Deshong, Legislative Director Mark Bernskoetter, and I met with several different Congressional Representatives and their staffs that serve on various Social Security subcommittees. We also met with staff people from the Congressional Budget Office and Management and Budget. In each meeting, we passionately explained our attrition rate and the current federal prohibition to hire new employees. We explained how long it takes to hire, train, and mentor new examiners to have any level of significant productivity. We explained that no matter how carefully we interview perspective new examiners that a certain percentage will not make it through the training and probationary period because they will see how difficult and demanding this work is. We explained that our attrition rate, coupled with our historic levels of new claims could only result in one outcome. That outcome is a higher staged backlog. Tens of thousands of new applications with not enough trained professionals to process them. We explained that while we may be funded for more CDRs [Continuing Disability Reviews] in the next fiscal year, the fact remains there are fewer people to process those CDRs. We painted a very vivid picture of an impending storm. We told each of them that they should expect to have their own constituents visit their offices to complain that their disability application has not been assigned to anyone to work on. We explained that even though the numbers are staggering they are not merely numbers but real people with legitimate impairments and many of them will live in their own Districts

Headcount Continues To Decline

     The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated figures for the number of employees at Social Security. Here they are, with earlier numbers for comparison purposes.

•  March 2012 65,257
• December 2011 65,911
• September 2011 67,136
• June 2011 67,773
• March 2011 68,700
• December 2010 70,270
• June 2010 69,600
• March 2010 66,863
• December 2009 67,486
• September 2009 67,632
• December 2008 63,733
• September 2008 63,990
• September 2007 62,407
• September 2006 63,647
• September 2005 66,147
• September 2004 65,258
• September 2003 64,903
• September 2002 64,648
• September 2001 65,377
• September 2000 64,521

A New Form Of Slavery

     From Huffington Post:

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Sunday called Social Security "a form of modern, 21st century slavery." ...

This isn't the first time he's compared U.S. social programs to slavery. Last week, he said that President Obama "does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning, and having that title of American ... he'd rather you be his slave."