Confusing New Attorney Fee Instructions

     Social Security has issued new instructions on fees for attorneys and others representing Social Security claimants. The instructions have to do with fee agreement cases where the claimant appoints two or more people to represent him or her and then one or more of the attorneys or representatives withdraws. It would be an understatement to say the instructions are confusing. Take a look at these examples given in the instructions and see if you can tell me what the underlying theory is:

Example 2: The claimant appointed two representatives from Firm A, one representative from Firm B, and one representative who is a sole practitioner. The representative from Firm B waived his or her fee from any source. The sole practitioner waived charging and collecting a fee from the claimant or any auxiliary beneficiaries because a third party entity will be paying his or her fee. The two representatives from Firm A have an approved fee agreement that each of them signed, and SSA determines a fee of $6000. The representatives from Firm A will receive $3000 each.
Example 3: The claimant appointed two representatives from Firm A and one representative from Firm B. One of the representatives from Firm A signed a fee agreement. The second representative from Firm A and the representative from Firm B both waived charging and collecting a fee from any source. At the time of a favorable decision, the decision maker approved the fee agreement; subsequently, SSA determines a fee of $6000. The Firm A representative who had an approved fee agreement will receive $3000, but the “waived share” of $3000 for the second representative from Firm A should go to the claimant.

    Would you want to be the person implementing this "policy"?

Does Social Security Have A Functioning System Of Dealing With Complaints About ALJs?

     From a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) (footnotes omitted):

Claimants and their advocates or representatives may file a complaint against an ALJ [Administrative Law Judge] if they believe the ALJ was biased or engaged in improper conduct. ... The Division of Quality Service (DQS), within ODAR’s [Office of Disability Adjudication and Review's] Office of Executive Operations and Human Resources, reviews and resolves these complaints with the assistance of ODAR’s RO [Regional Office] staff, as appropriate. At the time of our review, DQS had assigned approximately 12 employees, including 2branch chiefs and permanent and detailed staff, to handle ALJ complaints ...

DQS closed 1,490 ALJ misconduct complaint cases in Fiscal Year (FY) 2011. ... [W]e determined the median times for various processing time frames in FY2011. 

• The overall ODAR processing time, from the ALJ hearing to the closing of the complaint, was about 894 days since the AC needed to process the majority of the cases before DQS could initiate its own review.
• DQS processing time was about 400 days. 
• RO processing time, a subset of DQS processing time, was about 201 days....

Of the complaints closed in FY 2011, DQS substantiated 4 percent. DQS closed approximately 11 percent of the cases because the ALJ left SSA before DQS completed a full review of the complaint. About 5 percent of the decision fields was left blank in the system. DQS determined the remaining 80 percent of the cases were unsubstantiated....

SSA established the DQS process to ensure “Every complaint will be reviewed or investigated in a timely manner by an official who was not involved in the alleged improper conduct.” [According to the notice published in the Federal Register at the time the system was established] ... 

DQS management told us the Agency had not established time frames for reviewing and resolving complaints at every stage. However, during our review period, a DQS manager told us her office created its first report showing the age of pending complaints for internal use by DQS managers. In addition, this manager explained that DQS started tracking cases that were 1-year-old or older from the time DQS received them. DQS established a goal to close 60 percent of the year-old cases by the end of FY 2013. ...

[W]e reviewed one case DQS closed because the ALJ had retired. The ALJ held a hearing with the claimant in August 2007, and on December 2010 (3 years later), DQS closed the complaint before fully investigating the allegation because the ALJ had retired. We reviewed another case where 22 closed complaints related to 1 ALJ were labeled as ALJ No Longer With Agency after the ALJ was removed from the Agency because of improper behavior.

     Certainly many of the complaints lack merit. Others are legitimate complaints but concern an isolated instance of bad judgment by an otherwise good ALJ. Still, there is a small minority, perhaps 1-2% of ALJs, who are just bad ALJs, some of them ALJs who suffer from serious psychiatric problems, some of them ALJs who suffer from serious character flaws, but all of them people who are just in the wrong line of work. This is not a functional system of dealing with complaints about ALJ misconduct.  It takes far, far too long. Nothing is done for years and years about ALJs who are well known to be causing serious problems. Mostly, the agency just waits for the bad ALJs to retire. Not only do claimants and their attorneys deserve better, the vast majority of ALJs who do a good job deserve better than to be lumped in with these bad apples.

Interesting Map

     The Washington Examiner has a fairly predictable article that decries the number of people drawing disability benefits from Social Security. At least the piece has an interesting map showing the counties with the highest incident of disability. Hint: Disability hits hardest in rural areas represented in Congress by Republicans.

To The ALJ Association

     Dear ALJ Association:

      Take a look at the sort of thing that comes from claiming that because Social Security pressures you to hold more hearings and issue more decisions that the agency is forcing you to approve more disability claims. You're not getting back at your enemy, Social Security. You're not reducing the pressures you face to hear and decide cases. You're only aiding those who really want to influence how you decide cases or who just want to do away with your jobs altogether. The enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily your friend.

     I'm writing this as someone who agrees with you that ALJs are expected to hear and decide too many cases and that this reduces the quality of the process. I encourage you to stick to that message. I think it's a message that most people involved with the program have sympathy for. The "I'm being forced to approve claims" message is ridiculous.

One Of The Reasons Social Security's Death Master File Is Made Public

     From the AP:

More than $1.1 billion in unclaimed life insurance benefits have been recovered nationwide after an investigation, New York regulators said Wednesday.

The state's Department of Financial Services said many insurance companies were not using lists of recent deaths from the Social Security Administration to determine whether a policy holder had died. That meant if family members did not know there was a life insurance policy or forgot to file a claim, the policy went unpaid.

New York regulators say they directed insurers to use the Social Security master file to investigate unclaimed policies -- just as insurers used the list of recently deceased to determine when to stop annuity payments.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said state investigators working with insurance companies were able to make payments to 100,000 consumers nationwide, including more than 25,000 New York residents. The oldest claim dated to a death in 1960.

Unemployment And Social Security Disability; Also, What Are The Chances Of Chained CPI Being Adopted If The Chairman Of The House Ways And Means Committee Is Afraid To Even Use The Term "Chained CPI"?

     From a press release issued by the Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee:

Yesterday, Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX) introduced H.R. 1502, “The Social Security Disability Insurance and Unemployment Benefits Double Dip Elimination Act of 2013.”  The legislation would keep people from receiving both Social Security disability benefits and unemployment benefits at the same time.  A similar proposal was included in the President’s FY2014 budget with estimated savings of $1 billion over 10 years.

     In addition, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is reporting that the House Social Security Subcommittee has introduced legislation to switch Social Security to the Chained CPI method of computing the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). There is a press release from the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee obliquely suggesting that this is under consideration. The word "bipartisan" is used over and over in this press release but the term "Chained CPI" is never mentioned.

Work Incentives Fail Everywhere

     Great Britain decided that there were too many people drawing disability benefits under their social security system. Their plan to deal with this was to get one in six disability recipients back to work. Their definition of "back to work" was quite modest -- holding down a job for three months or more -- yet according to The Guardian newspaper all they have been able to achieve is about one in twenty returning to work. If you were to apply that British definition of a successful return to work to recipients of U.S. Social Security disability benefits, I think we'd already be returning 5% or more of disability benefits recipients to work.
     Returning large numbers of disability recipients to work isn't doable, no matter what you try. I keep harping on this point since members of Congress keep pursuing the return to work dream despite the overwhelming evidence that they're wasting their time.

Man Found Guilty In Shooting Outside SSA Headquarters

     From the Baltimore Sun:

A Baltimore County man was convicted Wednesday in the nonfatal shooting of an employee outside the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn in 2011.

Gary Stokes, 23, was found guilty by a Baltimore County jury in the shooting that caused the Social Security complex on Security Boulevard to go on lockdown for more than an hour.

Police said Stokes robbed Obie Blackmon of his cellphone and then shot him in the arm as he was taking an afternoon walk in woods near the campus.