This Should Be Fun

     From The Hill:

Republicans in the House and Senate plan to release separate budget blueprints this month, creating the potential for conflict as they head into a new fiscal battle with President Obama. ...

Details about what will be in the budget plans are scarce, but Republicans have stressed the need to cut the deficit and bring the budget “within balance,” which will require steep cuts to domestic programs and potentially changes to Social Security and Medicare.

The Octopus

     From an op ed by Daniel Hatcher in the Baltimore Sun:

Our state foster care agencies [in Maryland] are apparently so underfunded that they are taking resources from abused and neglected children. The agencies are taking control over foster children's Social Security benefits (when the children are disabled or have deceased parents) and using the children's funds to repay foster care costs. In other words, Maryland is requiring the children to pay for their own care. ...

It's almost out of a Charles Dickens novel — forcing orphaned and disabled foster children to pay for their own care. Other states have engaged in this practice regarding Social Security benefits, but the fact that other states may be engaged in bad policies does not make it OK for Maryland. ... 

There's more: Maryland hired a private company last year — Maximus, Inc. — to provide an assessment for how the state can obtain more resources from foster children and, according to Maximus' report, "maximize revenue gain"; the report describes foster children as a "revenue generating mechanism." The Maryland Department of Human Resources contracted with Maximums despite litigation regarding the practice and a finding by the Maryland Court of Appeals that the agency violated foster children's due process rights by providing no notice to the children or their lawyers. Maryland foster care agencies are significantly underfunded. But taking resources from the very children the agencies exist to serve is not the answer. ...

      Maximus is a major contractor for the Social Security Administration. They also represent claimants before Social Security. They've just gotten a contract to do disability determinations for the social security system in the United Kingdom! Did I miss anything?

Improved Video Hearing Picture Quality

     I don't know how widespread this is but in Eastern North Carolina, Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) has installed new equipment for video hearings which significantly improves picture quality. The new equipment doesn't take us to true hi-def. I'd say it improves picture quality from circa 1954 (or perhaps 1944) to circa 1990, which is a major improvement.

This Is Lame

     The Social Security Administration has a website that promises information about office closings updated "every 10 minutes." This is what it says right now:

Due to severe weather conditions impacting the Mid-Atlantic and other parts of the country, offices in New Jersey, Maryland, Washington D.C., Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas are closed or had delayed openings today, March 5, 2015. Please check with your local Social Security office to find out about office delays and closings in your local area.

     Why does this website promise something it doesn't come close to delivering? If you're a claimant or someone like myself who does business with the agency, what do you do? You try calling the local office but you can't get through which means nothing because you usually can't get through. You have no idea whether you're supposed to go ahead with whatever you have scheduled with the agency. During the last set of weather closings in my area, attorneys drove over an hour each way to attend hearings that weren't held!
     My advice is that Social Security should take down this website until it's ready to deliver on its promise of frequently updated information on office closings. This should be doable.

I Think This Is New

     An example added recently to Social Security's Program Operations Manual Series (POMS):

A 50-year-old claimant with a high school education and unskilled past relevant work has an RFC [Residual Functional Capacity] for standing/walking 2 hours of an 8-hour day and sitting approximately 6 hours of an 8-hour day. He is able to lift/carry/push/pull 20 pounds occasionally and 10 pounds frequently. This RFC falls between rule 201.12, which has a decision of disabled, and 202.13, which has a decision of not disabled. In this case, use rule 201.12 as a framework for a decision of disabled because the definitions in DI 25001.001 (Medical-Vocational Quick Reference Guide) indicate light work usually requires walking or standing for approximately 6 hours of an 8-hour day. Since the claimant can only walk or stand for 2 hours, he has a significantly reduced capacity to perform light work and a sedentary medical-vocational rule applies as a framework for a determination.

Workers Comp Cuts Costing Social Security

     From Linda DePillis writing for the Washington Post's Wonkblog:

There’s a good news/bad news situation for occupational injuries in the United States: Fewer people are getting hurt on the job. But those who do are getting less help. ...

“The cutbacks [in workers compensation] have been so drastic in some places that they virtually guarantee injured workers will plummet into poverty,” write authors Henry Grabell and Howard Berkes. “Workers often battle insurance companies for years to get the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend.” ...

Somebody ends up paying for those injuries, though: taxpayers. When a worker ends up unable to work because of an injury, he or she can be covered by Social Security Disability Insurance, a program that has steadily increased in cost over the past two decades. The rise has many demographic factors behind it, but it looks like the abdication of responsibility by employers may have played a role as well.

Average Retirement Age Has Gone Up

From a report by Alicia Munnell of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College

This Is How Some Overpayments Happen

     Social Security has created a "Work Site",  a website that's supposed to encourage return to work but it includes no information on how a disability recipient is supposed to notify the agency if he or she has returned to work. You're supposed to call the agency's 800 number but given the wait time on those calls, many claimants get frustrated and give up.  

     I looked into this because I just had a former client tell me he had called to tell Social Security that he had returned to work part time. He was told that since he was only earning $800 a month that it would be no problem. He received no written receipt of his report of return to work even though he called twice. That's wrong. He should have gotten a written receipt, especially since his Trial Work Period has now begun. There's no lower limit on earnings that are supposed to trigger the issuance of a written receipt.