Senator Hears About Social Security Service Problems

     From a story in the Missoulian about a town hall meeting that Senator John Walsh (D-MT) held in Missoula:

Mary Olson, who worked for the Social Security Administration for 29 years and now works for Missoula Aging Services, told Walsh the plan to move the program entirely online in 11 years, called “Vision 2025,” is destined for disaster. 

“The majority of rural America does not know how to use an online system, and it won’t work,” she said. “There is no simple part of Social Security. I wasn’t a social worker, but I became one working for the Social Security Administration. There are so many twists in the system. Even something as simple as putting in what date you want your benefits to start is extremely complicated if you don’t know all the information.”

 Olson recalled the story of one woman who didn’t realize she was eligible for $700 a month more in benefits because she had been married 40 years earlier. 

“These are people that are facing end-of-life issues, they are destitute and they aren’t getting the benefits they need,” she said. “That’s a travesty in my opinion.” 

Olson said that SSA supervisors are poorly trained.

 “There’s no quality control or accountability any more,” she said. “Back 10 or 20 years ago, we were focused on customer service. You couldn’t be rude with somebody. It’s all different now. The SSA needs a look, like the Department of Veterans Affairs got. It’s time to look into it, because the same things are going on.”

OIG Report On Obtaining Medical Records -- And How Much Does It Cost To Review Disability Claims

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued an audit report with the title Completeness of the Social Security Administration's Disability Claims Files. The report found that Social Security is not obtaining all medical records on claimants at the initial and reconsideration levels, mostly because medical providers don't always respond to requests for records or because the claimants failed to inform Social Security of all their medical sources. If you think that claimants are failing to tell Social Security of some of their medical sources for some devious reason, you lack experience with Social Security disability claimants. Virtually always the problem is forgetfulness and confusion. Medical treatment histories can get complicated when you're sick. You get referred to multiple specialists and you forget about some of them. Your brain isn't operating at 100% because of depression. There's rarely a reason for a claimant to even think of concealing any part of their treatment history. 

      The report assumes that medical development is done by at hearing offices after an Administrative Law Judge hearing is requested. In the very old days, more than 30 years ago, that was the case but now, are you kidding me? Hearing offices don't have anything like the staff to do this.

     The report does have this nugget of information on a subject that I don't think I've seen updated in a long time: "For Fiscal Year 2012, SSA reported that it cost the Agency $607 to process an initial DI claim and $463 to process an initial SSI claim, while it cost $2,328 to process a DI case and $1,431 to process an SSI case at the hearing level." I can attribute the lower cost of SSI cases at the initial level to the fact that SSI claimants typically have less access to medical care, which means fewer requests for medical records and less time spent reviewing medical records. The divergence at the hearing level makes no sense to me. On average, SSI files are shorter and take less time to review but the difference isn't that dramatic. I don't know what it is but there has to be some problem with these numbers.

Happy Birthday, Social Security

79 Years old today despite constant warnings from the right that it's doomed to fail!

Effects Of Reduced Staffing At Social Security

A line out the door of a Social Security field office in Hawaii

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has recently issued a report on the effects of field office hour reduction at the agency. The report shows:

• Many members of the public are unaware of the field office hour cutbacks. People regularly arrive at field offices that have closed for the day. Social Secuirty isn't doing a good job of communicating office hours and non-Social Security websites often contain misinformation on field office hours.
• Field office managers report that reduced hours allow staff to attend training and staff meetings as well as work on their workloads, particularly complex cases.
• Field office managers told OIG that the reduction in office hours did not reduce the number of visitors served. It just compressed them into a shorter time period.
• Public wait times at field offices increased from 14.4 minutes in July 2011 to 30.5 minutes in November 2013. This has led to increasing complaints from the public and lines out the door of some field offices. People sometimes wait in the rain.
• Field office appointment calendars are "usually" booked for the entire 60 day time period that the system allows.
• Overtime allotted to the field offices has declined dramatically. This alone has had the effect of reducing field office staffing by over 4,000 work years per year.
• Average staff on duty to handle 800 number calls declined by 833, 17%, between 2010 and 2013.

Robin Williams 1951-2014

How Much Did This Study Cost?

     From Vocational Factors in the Social Security Disability Determination Process:A Literature Review by David Mann and Jeannette de Richemond of the Mathematica Center for Studying Disability Policy:

At the request of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Mathematica Policy Research conducted a literature review to inform policy discussion about how the disability determination process for the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income program s incorporates consideration of the vocational factors —that is, age, education, and work experience. Specifically, we sought to identify and evaluate existing literature, reports, and studies that could directly support evidence -based conclusions about the following research question: to what extent do age, education, and work experience affect a person’s ability to perform work he or she has not performed before, independent of all other factors, such as health, impairments and limitations, motivation, or general labor market conditions? This research question, developed in consultation with SSA, is narrow in scope and reflects both statutory language about the vocational factors and how SSA currently incorporates them into the disability determination process. 

Our principal finding is that no rigorous evidence directly supports how the disability determination process currently uses vocational factors or how the disability determination process could change their future use. Although we found extensive documentation of relationships between the vocational factors and the extent to which people actually work or perform work-related activities, the documentation does not distinguish between the effects of the vocational factors on the ability to perform new work and the many other potential causes of the observed relationships. We identified only two articles that contained information tangentially relevant to the research question.

     I have three thoughts on looking at this report:

1. Duh. I could have told you this for free. Lots of people working for Social Security could have told you this for free. It's not like this subject has never come up before.
2. So either the Social Security Administration is looking for some justification for adjusting how it treats age, education and work experience in determining disability or someone is pressuring Social Security to hunt for some justification for doing this. I'll bet the latter.
3. I wonder how much these "Beltway Bandits" charged Social Security for this priceless research. By the way, guess what? Even though their research is spectacularly unhelpful, these researchers recommended additional research! I've never read one of these "Beltway Bandit" reports that didn't contain a self-serving recommendation for more research. I'll bet that the first topic covered when Mathematica trains new researchers is that it is company policy that all reports must include a recommendation for additional research.

Is This Why The Trustees Report Was So Late?

     Did Social Security's right wing opponents manage to get crucial data removed from the Trustees report? I don't know what happened or whether it matters much (how many people actually read the Trustees report?) but something peculiar happened and people are asking questions and getting no answers.

Off Topic But Awesome