Outreach To The Homeless Looks Successful, But ...

     The abstract of an article in the most recent issue of the Social Security Bulletin (emphasis added): 

This study uses administrative data to evaluate the outcomes of the disability applications submitted to the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Benefits Entitlement Services Team (B.E.S.T) Demonstration Project and to determine if the project successfully increased access to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments and/or Disability Insurance (DI) benefits for individuals experiencing homelessness. B.E.S.T—a unique partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, SSA, and the California Disability Determination Services—was a collaborative effort to locate homeless adults and assist them in applying for SSI payments and/or DI benefits. B.E.S.T facilitated the completion of SSI and DI applications, including the compilation of all forms and medical evidence needed to submit the completed applications to SSA. The findings show that B.E.S.T contributed to increased access to disability benefits for applicants. Relative to other disability cases, the B.E.S.T cases had high allowance rates and short processing times.

     The thing that concerns me is the degree of selectivity in the B.E.S.T. program. The article indicates that B.E.S.T. applicants had a 90% rate of success! There's no way of achieving that sort of "success" in this or any other population without being incredibly selective. In a law practice setting, I'd call it wildly overselective. Considering the frequency that homeless claimants are "lost to followup", as physicians put it, B.E.S.T. couldn't have just been insisting on gold plated cases. They must have been demanding platinum plated cases.
     This begs the question of what success means when you're trying to help homeless people.

OIG Report On ALJs With High Allowance And Disposition Rates

     The Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on "outlier" Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who have unusually high rates of approving disability claims and who also dispose of many cases is out.

     I have to repeat what I said in response to the press reports that this was coming: 

• Where did OIG find the gold standard for determining who is and who isn't disabled?
• Will OIG share this gold standard with the rest of Social Security? The agency has been seeking this gold standard for more than 50 years. 

     The OIG report gives essentially no information about the gold standard they found. It's not clear who administered this gold standard. What sort of training and experience did those people have?

     Of course, I and others keep wondering when OIG will take a look at ALJs with low allowance rates.

On Average Each Social Security Employee Responsible For Administering $45.5 Million Each Year

     The National Academy of Social Security (NASI) recently computed the amount of Medicare and Medicaid benefits per employee of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). I don't see that NASI has done a similar computation for Social Security. Let's give it a try. In 2013, Social Security paid out $2,764,431 million in retirement, survivors and disability benefits and $53,900 million in Supplemental Security Income (including state supplementation), for a total of $2,818,331 million in benefits. As of December 2013, Social Security had 61,957 employees. If my math is correct, that means that each Social Security employee was responsible for $45.5 million that year. 

     Given the vast sums of benefit payments that Social Security must administer, does the agency have enough employees to get the job done in an cost effective way? Does the agency have enough employees to provide adequate public service?

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:

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

     From the Wall Street Journal:

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?

Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Social Security Benefit Cuts

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

In Case You Were Wondering Whether ODAR Is Getting Many Objections To Video Hearings