Is It Fair?

     Is it fair for Social Security to demand repayment of an overpayment that was the agency's fault? A television station thinks it's not.

Social Security Turns Down Lots Of 100% Disabled Vets

     Below is a chart labeled "Allowance rates for first DI applications filed by veterans after receiving VA disability ratings of 100% or IU during fiscal years 2000–2006, by VA rating and SSA primary diagnosis body system and selected diagnostic categories." This appears in Veterans Who Apply for Social Security Disabled-Worker Benefits After Receiving a Department of Veterans Affairs Rating of “Total Disability” for Service-Connected Impairments: Characteristics and Outcomes by L. Scott Muller, Nancy Early, and Justin Ronca published in the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's research journal. DI refers to Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits. IU refers to Individual Unemployability. Veterans may be approved for 100% VA disability benefits either with or without consideration of IU.
     Overall, Social Security is denying about 31% of disability claims filed by veterans with a 100% VA rating. Social Security approves only 43.5% of these 100% disabled veterans claims at the initial level and 13.8% at reconsideration but 70.8% at the Administrative Law Judge level. Social Security is turning down 25.3% of the claims filed by veterans determined 100% disabled by VA due to traumatic brain injury and 34.8% of those found 100% disabled by VA due to dementia associated with brain trauma.

For Those Who Believe That Illegal Immigrants Will Bankrupt Social Security

     From VICE News:

Unauthorized workers are paying an estimated $13 billion a year in social security taxes and only getting around $1 billion back, according to a senior government statistician.

Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA), told VICE News that an estimated 7 million people are currently working in the US illegally. Of those, he estimates that about 3.1 million are using fake or expired social security numbers, yet also paying automatic payroll taxes. Goss believes that these workers pay an annual net contribution of $12 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.

The SSA estimates that unauthorized workers have paid a whopping $100 billion into the fund over the past decade. Yet as these people are in the US illegally, it is unlikely that they will be able to benefit from their contributions later in life.

Comparing Disability Benefits In US To Other Countries

     Below is a chart showing average growth rates in disability benefits by decade across several countries from Disability Benefit Growth and Disability Reform inthe US: Lessons from Other OECD Nations by Richard V Burkhauser, Mary C Daly, Duncan McVicarand Roger Wilkins in the IZA Journal of Labor Policy. The authors say that the United States must "reform" its disability benefits policies but the chart seems to me to dramatically undermine their argument.

Want To Save Some Real Money At Social Security?

     Even researchers at Mathematica, Social Security's prime contractor for the Ticket to Work program, could find "no consistent evidence of impacts [of Ticket to Work mailings] on the number of months in which beneficiaries did not receive benefits because of work, or on other outcomes." The researchers try to blame the failure of Ticket to Work on the recession.

Researchers Find Little Evidence For Link Between Disability Insurance Benefits And Decline In Labor Force Participation By Those With Work Limitations

     The abstract of Reconciling Findings On The Employment Effect Of Disability Insurance by John Bound , Stephan Lindner and Timothy Waidmann in the IZA Journal of Labor Policy:

Over the last 25 years, the Social Security Disability Insurance Program (DI) has grown dramatically. During the same period, employment rates for men with work limitations showed substantial declines in both absolute and relative terms. While the timing of these trends suggests that the expansion of DI was a major contributor to employment decline among this group, raising questions about the targeting of disability benefits, studies using denied applicants suggest a more modest role of the DI expansion. To reconcile these findings, we decompose total employment changes into population and employment changes for three categories: DI beneficiaries, denied applicants, and non-applicants. Our results show that during the early 1990s, the growth in DI can fully explain the employment decline for men only under an extreme assumption about the employment potential of beneficiaries. For the period after the mid-1990s, we find little role for the DI program in explaining the continuing employment decline for men with work limitations.

For Those Who Think Same Sex Marriage Will Destroy Social Security

     From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's analysis of the Social Security Trustees Report: 

The only major "legislative" change that affected Social Security came from the Supreme Court: the Windsor decision which overturned the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited federal benefits for same-sex couples even if they reside in a state that recognized their marriage. This decision makes more people eligible for survivors' benefits. The report notes that there is significant uncertainty around the estimate of new benefits because rules have not been finalized about how far back a marriage would count -- whether it would start at the time of the Supreme Court decision or when the state legally recognized the marriage, as the Social Security Administration has proposed -- and because it is uncertain how many states will legalize same-sex marriage. (The Trustees assume all states eventually will.) While the decision increases the 75-year shortfall by only 0.01 percent of payroll, the uncertainty surrounding the change means that this area could be a source of future revisions.

$700,000 Social Security Fraud

     A press release issued by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

Thervil Alcinor, 34, of Miami, pled guilty to one count of access device fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft ...

Alcinor was involved in the use of personal identifying information ... to file fraudulent applications for Social Security Retirement Insurance Benefits (RIB) and Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB), and to file fraudulent income tax returns with the IRS claiming false refunds.

Court documents state that Alcinor was involved in establishing online accounts on the Social Security Administration website, MySSA.gov, for already-existing RIB or DIB beneficiaries to redirect RIB and DIB payments to accounts (often prepaid debit card accounts) controlled by him. Law enforcement identified 945 fraudulently established MySSA accounts, all with similarly concocted fraudulent email addresses. The fraudulent claims resulted in $700,462 in fraudulent RIB and DIB payments.