Social Security News

Nov 16, 2014

Options For Future Changes To Social Security

From a survey conducted by Greenwald and Associates for the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) in June 2014:

Nov 15, 2014

Inspector General To Issue Report On ALJs Who Approve Many Disability Claims

A large number of Social Security disability cases approved by certain judges lacked “a well-supported rationale” for awarding benefits, the agency’s inspector general will say in a new report, potentially drawing renewed scrutiny to a program that grew sharply during the economic downturn.

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general plans next week to issue a report that looks at benefits paid by administrative law judges who had both decided an unusually large number of cases and awarded an unusually high number of benefits.

The agency determined there were 44 judges over seven years who met that criteria, a number that represented just 4% of the agency’s judicial corps. ...

It examined 275 instances when those judges awarded benefits and found that just 31 of the cases were “properly processed.” Another 216 of the cases “had quality issues,” and 28 “had missing information that prevented us from reviewing the file,” according to the report.

The inspector general concluded that 38 of the 275 cases should have ultimately been denied. It used these findings to determine that the agency “improperly allowed disability benefits on approximately 24,900 cases, resulting in questionable costs of about $2 billion.”

Could someone explain to me how Social Security's Office of Inspector General came by the gold standard for judging who is and who isn't disabled? I know that the rest of Social Security would love to see that gold standard. They've been looking for it for more than 60 years but they just can't seem to find it.

Fallacy Of The Day: People Are Living Longer So They Are Working Longer

This is from an article in the Social Security Bulletin.

FRA refers to Full Retirement Age, which used to be 65, is 66 now and will become 67.

In case you're having trouble understanding these charts, they show that the vast majority of men and women go on Social Security retirement benefits before full retirement age. Any increase in the full retirement age functions far more as a benefit cut than as an incentive to work longer. The vast majority of people can't make it to full retirement age now. How can increasing full retirement age affect them other than to cut their benefits?