Is Disability "Attractively Lucrative"?

     From an op ed piece by Rosie Fletcher in the New Statesman, a British newspaper, written about proposed changes in social security disability benefits in her country:

Another day, another rummage down the back of the benefits sofa to find a spare £12bn. This week: changing Employment Support Allowance to incentivise ill people to get back to work. 

One problem: I already have the best incentive to stop being ill and get back to work. It’s called “being ill”. I would love to go back to work because if I were able to work, I would no longer be sick. Long-term illness nibbles away at your identity from the edges, taking out chunks of the things that make you you: the friends you meet, the shops you wander into, the job you do. 

I would love to work, if only because it would give me something to use in small talk, a context in which to place myself, the grit around which an imperfect pearl of who I am can begin to re-form.

I would like to have a job. I would like to feel productive. I would like to do more with my day than clutch at cups of tea and switch on the radio because I can’t keep my eyes open for the television. But currently I can’t and I rely on ESA to keep me in teabags. 

 This proposal makes two fundamental mistakes: that illness and disability are a) passive and b) attractively lucrative. ... 

 Disease isn’t like a gas meter. It has no notion of economics. It doesn’t switch off because you’ve stopped putting money in. This isn’t some kind of elaborate con I’ve been running, shutting myself away from the world to trick you out of the princely sum of £48 a week. Cutting my benefits won't get me back into work. It will make my life smaller, more stressful. It will make me sicker. ... 

 This isn’t just a question of economics, of ideological war on the welfare state. This is the insidious, callous notion that sick and disabled people are ultimately not trying hard enough. This says what people with chronic illnesses and disabilities hear all too much from their friends, from their families, from even their doctors: we do not believe that you are ill. ...

Social Security's "Very Aggressive" Goal: Answer The Phone In Less Than Twelve Minutes

     The most recent issue of the newsletter of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), a voluntary organization of Social Security management personnel, has an article on the agency's Teleservice Centers (TSCs). Some points from the piece:

• On June 10, 2014 Social Security's 800 number handled its One-Billionth call;
• As of June 2015, the TSCs had handled 49 million calls since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2014;
• The TSCs have a "very aggressive" goal of 700 seconds average speed of answer and 8% agent busy rate.

Number Drawing Disability Benefits Continues To Decline

     After being quite slow in getting out the May disability data, Social Security has rushed out the June numbers. For the eight time in the last nine months, the number of people drawing Disability Insurance Benefits from the Social Security Administration has declined. This is not some minor anomaly. The number drawing benefits at the end of June 2015 is below what it was at the end of June 2014. No one predicted this but it's happening. Given the dramatic decrease in the number of disability claims filed, the number drawing benefits is likely to continue to decline for an extended period of time.

House Ways And Means Committee Schedules Hearing On Promoting Work Opportunities For The Disabled

     The House Ways and Means Committee has announced that a hearing will be held on Thursday, July 9 at 10:00 a.m. on promoting work opportunities for Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries. 

     I wonder what it would come to if someone counted up the number of hearings this Committee or its Social Security Subcommittee has held on this topic over the decades. I bet it would average at least one a year for the last 50 years.

Senator Lankford Has A Plan

     Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has written a piece for The Hill about Social Security disability. Here are a few excerpts:

In May, over a thousand West Virginians and Kentuckians went to their mailbox and found letters telling them their disability checks would soon be cut off. 

Why? Because a government watchdog group had reason to believe that yet another lawyer and/or doctor was involved in Social Security fraud.  ...

It is time for a major overhaul of the disability system and a renewed focus on the disabled. Before the SSDI program goes insolvent in 2016, there are things that Congress and the Social Security Administration can do to protect the program for those who rely on it and the taxpayers who fund it.

A step in the right direction would include preventing individuals from receiving checks for the earned income tax credit or unemployment benefits and Social Security disability in the same year. ...

The “vocational grid” that defines which jobs are available in America has not been updated since the mid 1970s. Obviously, a few things have changed in the American economy since the ’70s, but the definition of employment used for disability has not changed. 

Many of these are potentially productive citizens who may have an additional challenge to employment, but they are not incapable of work.

Currently, disability attorneys are paid by Social Security offices around the country, not by the individuals who hire them. Disability attorneys take a portion of the disabled person’s check from them if they win the case, but the federal government is tasked to extract that fee from each individual and become the third party to every disability legal contract.

Why not allow the person who hired the attorney and signed the contract to also pay the bill? 

The incentive for the attorneys is to delay the case as long as possible, so their payment can extract the maximum amount from the disabled person’s check at the end. 

No law or regulation prevents a lawyer acting on behalf of a claimant from delaying a hearing by introducing new evidence moments before the hearing begins, effectively forcing the judge to put off the hearing. This prevents the claimant from getting benefits to which he or she may be entitled, but it ensures a bigger paycheck for the lawyer. That’s not how it works in a regular court, and that’s not how it should work for SSDI. ...

Social Security Now Recognizing Same Sex Marriages Nationwide

     I wondered how long it would take  the Social Security Administration to consult with the Department of Justice about the Obergefell decision before it fully recognized same sex marriages. It turns out that it took a little over a week. The agency is now fully recognizing same sex marriages, at least as of the date that each state started recognizing same sex marriages. 

     There are still issues about back benefits. If Texas, for instance, wasn't recognizing out of state same sex marriages until the Obergefell decision, is it still appropriate to deny claims for benefits based upon out of state same sex marriages for persons living in Texas for the time period before Obergefell? I expect that there's going to be litigation on this issue. Fortunately, it's a minor matter, affecting only back benefits for only a few people.

Wasting Money Trying To Collect Low-Dollar SSI Overpayments

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Generally, SSA [Social Security Administration] attempted to collect overpayments regardless of the amount. ... 

SSA collects data on the average costs to collect RSI [Retirement and Survivors Insurance], DI [Disability Insurance], and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] overpayments via its Cost Analysis System ( CAS ). ... However, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment as reported in CAS represents the cost of a single action taken to collect an SSI overpayment during a FY [Fiscal Year]. Therefore, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment does not represent the cost of collecting the overpayment when multiple actions are required. This results in an understatement of the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment when multiple collection actions are required. ... 

Based on our analysis using average cost data from CAS, we estimated SSA spent over $323 million to collect low-dollar overpayments in FYs 2008 through 2013. Using SSA’s overpayment collection percentages for these FYs, we estimated SSA collected approximately $109.4 million of the low-dollar overpayments. This resulted in SSA spending over $213.6 million more than it collected ....

Attorney Fee Payments Continue To Decline

     Through June of this year, fees paid to attorneys and some others for representing Social Security claimants totaled $561 million. This is a 5% decline from the $588 million paid during the same period last year.