The Overwhelming Majority Of Disability Claims Get Denied At The Initial And Reconsideration Levels

     From the newsletter (not available online) of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) -- click twice on image to view full size:

A Satellite Office Closes

     From West Hawaii Today:

For the last time in the foreseeable future, the Social Security Administration offered satellite office hours in Kona Tuesday morning.

Social Security employees began calling West Hawaii residents in to the West Hawaii Civic Center’s community room at about 9:30 a.m. By just after 10 a.m., more than 120 people were signed up to use the services. ...

Last year, then-Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-2nd, told West Hawaii Today she would look into the administration’s reasoning for keeping such limited hours in West Hawaii. Not long after that, the administration ended the visits to West Hawaii entirely. They resumed the monthly visits in February, with the intention of coming here only through this month.

     It's a two hour drive from Kona to Hilo, the nearest Social Security field office.
     This same sort of thing is happening all over the country.  This is what inadequate budget resources do to service at Social Security. Read the whole article to see what those waiting in line thought about the idea of doing all their business with Social Security online.

Big Employee Fraud Case In Alabama

     The Associated Press reports that Manuel Chaney III, who had worked at Social Security's Bessemer, AL field office, has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for an identity theft scheme. Chaney had used information obtained from his employment to identify people who had recently died. It's not clear from the article exactly what he did thereafter. He may have filed survivor claims on those accounts or he may have kept the decedents in payment status while diverting the payments to accounts he controlled. In any case, the fraud amounted to $325,000.

Can Pain Be Measured?

     From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Persistent pain is measured by means of self-report, the sole reliance on which hampers diagnosis and treatment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) holds promise for identifying objective measures of pain, but brain measures that are sensitive and specific to physical pain have not yet been identified. ...

In study 1, the neurologic signature showed sensitivity and specificity of 94% or more (95% confidence interval [CI], 89 to 98) in discriminating painful heat from nonpainful warmth, pain anticipation, and pain recall. In study 2, the signature discriminated between painful heat and nonpainful warmth with 93% sensitivity and specificity (95% CI, 84 to 100). In study 3, it discriminated between physical pain and social pain with 85% sensitivity (95% CI, 76 to 94) and 73% specificity (95% CI, 61 to 84) and with 95% sensitivity and specificity in a forced-choice test of which of two conditions was more painful. In study 4, the strength of the signature response was substantially reduced when remifentanil was administered.

     Before anyone gets excited at the thought that Social Security can finally measure pain, a few caveats are in order:

• There were only 114 participants in the study. 
• The test subjects were described as healthy with a median age of just under 25 years. The study's authors caution that the results might be different in non-healthy individuals.
• The pain that was "measured" was administered by the researchers -- "thermal stimuli" to the left forearm of varying degrees of severity.
• The study's authors indicate that if the validity of the study could be shown to extent to "clinical populations", the test might be used to confirm pain in patients who cannot communicate. Also, the study could be used as a basis for other studies. The study's authors are not even suggesting that the fMRI could have forensic uses.
• The study's authors caution that the study's results would have to be validated across persons, scanning protocols and research sites.
• The study's authors caution that the results might be different depending upon the site in the body where the pain is generated, the clinical cause of the pain and the type of the pain. For instance, would visceral pain register differently than the cutaneous pain that the researchers generated in their study? How would neuropathic pain compare with the pain from arthritis?
• fMRIs are expensive. They are an uncommon test with limited uses at the moment. Probably, there would be no clinical reason to use the fMRI to evaluate pain in a person who can communicate, meaning that if used for disability determination purposes, Social Security would probably have to foot that expensive bill.

Yeah, I Kinda Thought So

     From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

[National Republican Campaign Committee] Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) touched a nerve when he savaged the entitlement changes in President Obama's budget as a "shocking attack on seniors," Roll Call reports.

But "it's the lack of fallout" that may be more revealing.

The debate Walden's remarks "has set off inside the GOP shows many Republicans harbor deep-seated fears about publicly supporting the entitlement cuts they supposedly back and have demanded Obama and other Democrats embrace since taking control of the House in 2011."

NOSSCR Issues Press Release To Combat Attacks On Social Security Disability Programs

     The National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives has put out a press release on the "dramatic, sensationalized media reports about the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs, based on anecdotes, half-truths and misrepresentation of facts."

Chained CPI Proposal Creates Republican Disgreement

     From the Chicago Tribune:

President Obama's proposal to trim Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments has sparked not only Democratic outrage, but Republican confusion.

In the days since Obama put the idea in his 2014 budget, Republicans' reactions have included support, opposition and refusal to commit. The proposal was once a mainstay of the GOP's deficit-reduction overtures to the White House.

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that the idea, the so-called chained Consumer Price Index, “is the least we must do to begin to solve the problems in Social Security.”

But the chairman of the House Republican Congressional Committee, who is trying to preserve the party's majority in the House in the next election, called it a “shocking attack on seniors.”

“You're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go,” Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon told CNN.  

That potentially off-message comment provoked swift rebuke from the powerful Club for Growth, the conservative advocacy group that supports the measure as a starting point for reining in spending on government entitlement programs. ...

Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee and the top party guru on budget issues, said the president was to be “commended” for taking on Democrats with the hot-button proposal in the budget. But Ryan panned it as a “modest” attempt at deficit reduction and declined to immediately lend his support.

One Republican Seems To Like Chained CPI

     From a House Ways and Means Committee press release (emphasis in original):

U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, today announced the first in a series of hearings on the President’s and other bipartisan entitlement reform proposals.  This hearing will focus on using the Chained Consumer Price Index to determine the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment.   This proposal was included in the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget, the report by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and the report of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force.  The hearing will take place on Thursday, April 18, 2013, in B-318 Rayburn House Office Building, beginning at 9:30 a.m. ...

The President likes to say that if we agree on a policy, then we should act and not let our differences hold us up, and I agree.  This hearing will include a full discussion of a policy with bipartisan support – more accurately measuring inflation in order to strengthen the Social Security program.”

     However, the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee said recently that chained CPI is an attempt "to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go."