Hit Piece In The WSJ

     The Wall Street Journal has an op ed piece titled "Disability Claim Denied? Find The Right Judge." It's behind a pay wall. I'll just extract a few phrases and sentences to give readers the flavor of the piece:

• "morphed into a benefit bonanza that costs taxpayers billions of dollars more than it should"
• "judicial impartiality has declined significantly"
• "Congress should also institute 15-year term limits for judges"
• "Congress can limit this gamesmanship by allowing only one application per claimant in a three-year period."
• "Decades ago workers ages 50 or 55 might have been considered retiring, but this is no longer generally the case. Novel job-training programs also make it easier than ever for workers to move into new fields and make up for low levels of education, and new disability criteria would account for these changes."  
  

     Michael Hiltzik takes down some of the nonsense in this piece but there's so much more. I'll limit myself to one sentence in the piece. What are these "novel job-training programs" that make it easier for handicapped people to move into different fields? I have no idea what he's talking about. Older people are less adaptable. That's just a fact of human existence. There's no program, old or new, that can change that. Making up for low levels of education? Adult basic education has been around for a very long time for those who are able to take advantage of it. The problem, however, is that the most common reason for people having low educational attainments is that they have limited cognitive abilities. That's an unpleasant truth that both liberals and conservatives prefer not to talk about. Sure, the limited cognitive abilities often have their genesis in childhood poverty but limited cognitive abilities are largely irreparable regardless of their cause. I'd be happy to substitute IQ tests for educational attainments in disability determination.

Not Many Rejected Disability Applicants Go Back To Work

From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

A Poll

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

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.