COLA Announcement Due On Wednesday

     The announcement of this year's Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits is due out on Wednesday. It will probably be 1.7%.

Nazis On Social Security

     The Associated Press is reporting that there is a "loophole" that allows people who are suspected of having been Nazi war criminals to collect U.S. Social Security benefits after fleeing the U.S. According to the AP at least 38 suspects are involved. Apparently, these are people who left the U.S. after being threatened with formal expulsion.

     I would not call this a "loophole." There is no provision in the Social Security Act that would deny benefits to these people even if they had been convicted of war crimes unless they were actually in prison. 

     The article is sloppily written or edited. For instance, it keeps using the abbreviation "OSI" without once saying what it means. Apparently, OSI is the Office of Special Investigations at the Department of Justice which seeks out Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. The article talks of "a bitter back-and-forth between the two agencies with each accusing the other of being un-American." However, the article doesn't identify the two agencies. I don't think Social Security was one of those agencies but I can't tell for sure.

     By this point, this is mostly of historical interest. The handful of former Nazis involved who are still alive are at least 90. The evidence against them couldn't have been all that strong at the time they left the U.S. or they would have been prosecuted. By this point virtually all witnesses who could testify against them are dead. If some process was created to strip them of their Social Security benefits, they'd be dead before the process could be completed.

Washington Post's Bleak Take On Social Security Hearings

     The Washington Post has an article on Social Security's huge backlog of disability hearings. Here are a couple of excerpts to give an idea of the article's bleak, despairing tone:

In this case, the [disability hearing] system became, in effect, too big to fix: Reforms were hugely expensive and so logistically complicated that they often stalled, unfinished. What’s left now is an office that costs taxpayers billions and still forces applicants to wait more than a year — often, without a paycheck — before delivering an answer about their benefits. ... 

“I really wonder if what we’re doing is effective at all. If it helps at all,” [Social Security Administrative a Law Judge] Pennock said, after a day of hearing cases and trying to reduce her share of the backlog. “If, based on the amount of evidence we get, my decision is any better than flipping a coin.”

     A reader could only come to the conclusion that not only is the Social Security disability hearing process broken but that it is unfixable. The only solution would be to abolish Social Security hearings and maybe to abolish Social Security disability benefits themselves. It is the right wing view of government as hopeless, something to be largely eliminated since it can't be reformed. 

     Disability determination is a messy business but many worthwhile things in life are messy, including mankind itself. Disability benefits are an essential lifeline for millions. Without hearings Sovial Security disability would lack legitimacy. If the hearings were abolished, they would have to be restarted almost immediately. There would be too many horrible injustices that couldn't be righted.                      
     There is a simple solution for Social Security's hearing backlog -- more resources. That's been done before. We know it works. It was working until tea party Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. Everything else has been tried without success. 

Don't You Know The Department Of Justice Has To Study This For Another Year Or Two?

     From USA Today:

When the U.S. Supreme Court reopened the door for same-sex marriages in Indiana last week, Ryan Selby and Barry Cox thought their battle for recognition was over. ... 

[W]hen Selby called the Social Security Administration the same day the Supreme Court let stand federal court rulings striking down Indiana's ban on same-sex marriage, he thought they'd be able to honor his request to change his last name to his husband's.Instead, he was met with uncertainty. 

"They said they didn't have any process in place," Selby said.

What I Spend A Lot Of Time Doing

     If you wonder what attorneys who represent Social Security claimants do, let me tell you about one client I recently met with. He's a young man with a congenital health problem. In addition to helping him file a request for reconsideration of his disability denial and telling him how ridiculously long it will take for him to get a hearing after he's denied at recon, I advised him on the help available to him under the Affordable Care Act (not much since NC declined additional Medicaid benefits), advised him on local free or lost cost health care (which will be an enormous help to him), advised him on prescription assistance plans to help with his very high drug costs (which again will be an enormous help to him and his parents) and advised him on filing for Medicaid. I also talked with him about applying for Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefits once one of his parents dies or goes on Social Security, making sure to warn him that he wouldn't be able to get DAC if he's married.
     This client needed more non-Social Security advice than most but an attorney must know all this and a lot more to effectively advise Social Security disability claimants. 

     Most Social Security employees have no idea how much help Social Security claimants need from their lawyers and how much of that help is only indirectly related to Social Security benefits.

     And to lawyers who don't do this sort of counseling because they never meet with their clients until the day of the hearing, real lawyering is a fulfilling career. You ought to try it.

OIG Explains Its Need For Ammo

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) tries once again to explain why it needs to buy large quantities of ammunition. I think the issue that OIG is avoiding is whether it is classifying too many of its employees as law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers get to retire at an earlier age than other employees.

Why Social Security Is Lagging In IT

     From Federal Times:

The “next generation” of the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Program (T4NG) — the Department of Veterans Affairs’ contract to manage its IT [Information Technology] systems — will almost double in scope from the current T4 contract, with the projected value rising from a ceiling of $12 billion to $22.3 billion.

     Has Social Security spent $22.3 billion on managing its IT systems in the last ten years? Twenty years? In its entire history?

"Very Unlike" The Way Things Normally Happen At Social Security?

     From Harry Gross' column in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

DEAR HARRY: Many years ago, my husband had heart failure. He applied for Social Security disability, which took three years to get.... 

About five years ago, Social Security sent us a letter saying that the payments to the children were incorrect and demanded a return of $12,000. We asked for a review of this, and the reviewer then sent us another letter now demanding an additional $8,000 with no explanation as to where it came from.

We paid back the money, but I can't see any reason for any overpayment. I cannot reach that reviewer or anyone else who is willing to explain this to me. Don't we have any recourse?

WHAT HARRY SAYS: This is very unlike the way things are normally checked out at Social Security. Try going to your local Social Security office with all your info. That visit will get you all the data on that refund and quite likely a resolution of the problem.

     No, this is actually normal behavior at Social Security. It's extremely difficult to get an explanation for an alleged overpayment and the amount usually changes if you file an appeal, although my experience is that when you file an appeal the amount goes down more often than it goes up. I've had several cases where an alleged overpayment turned into a large underpayment by the time we got through!
     The easiest way for the widow to have resolved these overpayments, at least for the children, would have been to request waiver. The children certainly weren't at fault and it's unlikely they had the means to pay back the money. Waiver would have been close to automatic for the children. Probably, the widow could also get a waiver.
     Unfortunately, even most attorneys who do Social Security work aren't familiar with overpayment cases. It's hard to hire an attorney for a Social Security overpayment case anyway because there's no way to charge a contingent fee in these cases and the claimants usually can't afford to pay a fee in any other way. It's a shame since there's so much an attorney can do to help a claimant with an overpayment.