Social Security Subcommittee Hearings On Disability Programs

     The written testimony of Joyce Manchester, Chief of the Long-Term Analysis Unit of the Congressional Budget Office, and  Stephen Goss, Social Security's Chief Actuary, at today's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee has been released.

     The Subcommittee has also scheduled another hearing concerning Social Security's disability programs on March 20. The press release on this hearing quotes the Subcommittee Chairman as saying "Instead of relying on objective standards to reach decisions, examiners and judges on the front lines have increasingly had to make more judgment calls. Given the advances in medical treatment and rehabilitation, we need to fundamentally understand how agency policies may be influencing decisions and determine whether these policies still make sense for the times we live in."

Witness List For House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

     The witness list for Thursday's House Social Security Subcommittee hearing has been released. Only two witnesses are scheduled: Stephen Goss, Social Security's Chief Actuary and Joyce M. Manchester, Ph.D., Chief, Long-Term Analysis Unit, Health, Retirement, and Long-Term Analysis Division Congressional Budget Office. 

     Goss is on record saying that the shortfall in the Social Security Disability Trust Fund is temporary and can be resolved by transferring money from the Retirement Trust Fund.

     Here is a summary of a research paper by Manchester and others:

We use administrative longitudinal data on earnings, impairment, and mortality to replicate and extend Bound's seminal study of rejected applicants to federal Disability Insurance (DI). We confirm Bound's main result that rejected older male applicants do not exhibit substantial labor force participation. We show this result is stable over time, robust to more narrow control groups, and similar within gender, impairment, industry, and earnings groups. However, we also find that younger rejected applicants have substantial employment after application. To what extent this translates into potential employment for new beneficiaries depends on which group among them is considered "on the margin" of receiving DI. If we use initially rejected applicants -- a large and growing fraction of new beneficiaries -- the resulting counterfactual employment rate for younger applicants is low, too. We also find that rejected applicants bear signs of economically induced applicants. DI appears to induce a growing number of less successful workers to apply, an important fraction of which ends up without benefits and non-employed.

Way, Way Off Topic

     The Associated Press reports that "in a bizarre twist, basketball star Dennis Rodman is expected to arrive in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday in a makeshift popemobile as he campaigns for Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to become the church's first black pope."

Reduce The COLA?

Americans’ Views on Changing Social Security’s Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA)
	Increase the COLA	Reduce the COLA
Favor	64%	30%
Strongly	31	11
Somewhat	33	19
Not Sure	26	33
Oppose	10	37
Strongly	3	17
Somewhat	7	20

From a survey conducted by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Former ALJ Bisantz Passes

     Retired Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Bisantz passed away yesterday. Bisantz was Acting Chief ALJ at one time.

Is More Rehab The Answer?

     The Deseret News of Salt Lake City has a long piece on "How federal disability policy mangles its mission." Here are a few excerpts:

Over the last 20 years, the disability rolls have burgeoned. In 1989, just 2.3 percent of Americans aged 25-64 received SSDI benefits. Today, that number has jumped to nearly 5 percent, or nearly 9 million adults.

That jump was not cheap. In 1990, Social Security spent $20 billion a year on disability. Today, it spends more than $128 billion.

And much of this growth went to often hazy claims that are hard to prove, including mental disorders and back pain. And many are not so much disabled as they are economically bypassed. ...

Like most federal entitlements, the disability program faces an existential crisis, as limited resources stand in the way of ever-expanding expectations.

Later this month, a key Social Security advisory board will meet to fix the disability system by getting fewer false positives that drive up costs and fewer false negatives that chew up lives. ...

When SSDI was enacted in 1956, “an able worker could maintain a job and didn't need assistance from the disability program, but a disabled worker couldn't possibly work, and needed the government to provide income and medical care,” said MIT's [David] Autor.

The 1956 disability law, still in force, treats a disabled worker as an oxymoron. You are either a worker or you are disabled — not both.

That model is now “totally outdated,” Autor said, “partly because work is more sedentary, and medicine can actually help you. But also because attitudes have greatly changed.” The very purpose of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, he notes, is to integrate the disabled worker into the labor force, by compelling employers to be more accommodating.

“Many Americans are willing and able to work,” Autor said, but work limitations under current law “curtail their earning power and raise their health costs.” ...

If the Americans with Disabilities Act was supposed to get more disabled workers into the work force, it seems to have failed. In fact, the sharp spike in disability claims began when the ADA was passed, notes Jennifer Erkulwater, a professor of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

“Everyone thought the ADA was going to open up work to people with disabilities and they would become taxpayers,” Erkulwater said. “In fact, it had the exact opposite effect.”

Erkulwater suspects that the ADA, combined with 1984 policy changes that opened up disability claims for mental and musculoskeletal disorders, drove up claims by destigmatizing disability and encouraging new types of disorders.

     Articles like this can just appear on their own based upon a reporter's investigation. However, they are often planted. I suspect that this and similar articles are being planted by economic interests wishing to preserve and expand the Ticket to Work program. Ticket to Work is a complete failure and waste of money yet the contractors that profit from Ticket to Work want it expanded.

Employment Down 2% In Last Year

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has posted updated figures for the number of employees at Social Security.These figures do not show the effects of reductions in overtime at Social Security.

• December 2012 64,538
• September 2012 65,113
• June 2012 65,282
• 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

Updated Fee Payment Numbers

      Social Security has issued updated numbers on payments of fees to attorneys and some others for representing Social Security claimants. These fees are withheld and paid by Social Security but come out of the back benefits of the claimants involved. The attorneys and others who have their fees withheld pay a user fee for this privilege. Since these fees are usually paid at the same time that the claimant is paid, these numbers show how quickly or slowly Social Security is able to get claimants paid after a favorable determination on their claims.

Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-13	32,663	$96,690,734.65
Feb-13	35,508	$102,242,540.93