Jan 21, 2016

The Depressing State Of Hearing Backlogs At Social Security


 
Posted by Charles T. Hall at 24 comments:
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Jan 20, 2016

New Instructions For Attorney-Advisor Decision

     Social Security has issued new instructions for Attorney-Advisor (AA) decisions (also called Senior Attorney decisions) after claimants requests a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). The idea is that clearly meritorious claims would be quickly approved by AAs. The AAs would not deny any claims. If the AA couldn't approve a claim, the claimant would still get an ALJ hearing. The point of the AA decisions is to help reduce the backlog of pending requests for hearings.
     The AA decisions have been around for many years. Since 2010 when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives there have been few AA decisions. Not coincidentally, the hearing backlog has mushroomed. The AA reviews conducted in recent years seemed to me to be a waste of resources. I would get a call from an AA saying they were reviewing a case. The AA would ask for certain pieces of medical evidence and demand that the evidence be submitted in two weeks or less. That's completely unreasonable. Most medical providers don't respond to requests in that kind of timeframe. When I told an AA that I couldn't get the evidence in within the timeframe they were giving, I was told that the AA couldn't hold onto the case any longer. However, it was often the case that I had already requested, obtained and submitted the records that the AA wanted suggesting that the AAs weren't reviewing the files too closely before calling. It didn't seem to matter what records were submitted or how strong the case was. We wouldn't get any action from the AAs. The AAs seemed to be almost incapable of approving a claim. They were just spinning their wheels. The agency would have been better off if the AAs were drafting decisions for ALJs.
     We'll see how these new instructions are implemented but I see no evidence in them that there will now be large numbers of AA decisions. In past years when there were many AA decisions, cases were selected for AA review based upon profiles of claims likely to be approved by ALJs. The profiles were top secret but it wasn't hard to see the pattern -- mentally ill claimants and older claimants. I though the profiles worked pretty well. I never understood why they were abandoned unless the point was to hold down the number of claims approved by AAs. The new instructions suggest to me that cases will not be selected for review based upon profiles. Here are the selection criteria in the new instructions:
  • New and material evidence is submitted;
  • There is an indication that additional evidence is available;
  • There is a change in the law and regulations; or
  • There is an error in the record or another indication that a fully favorable decision may be warranted.
      I suppose the "another indication that a fully favorable decision may be warranted" language would cover profile selection but I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't say they intend to use profiles. The first two criteria could be used to cover virtually any case with a pending request for hearing. Reviewing virtually all cases wouldn't be a good thing. There's too much effort wasted on cases where the AAs can't or won't issue a favorable decision.
     The instructions suggest that there will be a two level process. One person will hand select a case for AA review and then another will actually do the AA review. That's labor intensive. The instructions carefully forbid an AA from actually reviewing a case that he or she has selected for review, suggesting a process that almost requires that two AAs agree before an AA decision is issued.
     It looks like there won't be that many AAs participating in the process. Only those selected to a national "team" will be allowed to participate. The instructions themselves say the "team" is a "small group."
     After an AA decision is issued there will be four different levels of "quality review" which suggests a deep uneasiness with AA decisions.
     It still looks like the agency thinks that holding down the number of disability claims approved is far more important than dealing with its hearing backlog. I hope to be pleasantly surprised but I'm not expecting much from this. Meanwhile, the hearing backlog continues to grow.

Posted by Charles T. Hall at 33 comments:
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Jan 19, 2016

Miami Psychiatrist Indicted For Social Security Fraud

     From the Miami Herald:
A Miami psychiatrist who became a national symbol of over-prescribing was indicted this week by a federal grand jury for allegedly running a racket that defrauded numerous public programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Social Security Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Fernando Mendez-Villamil, 48, and three other Miami-Dade residents whom he employed in his Coral Way office, were charged with an elaborate scheme to provide false diagnoses of debilitating psychiatric conditions that allowed numerous people to fraudulently qualify for Social Security disability benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, and to be exempted from testing requirements for becoming naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the grand jury indictment filed in Miami federal court on Thursday....
A third employee, Arnaldo Oscar Jimenez, 57, of Hialeah, also allegedly recruited individuals who wanted to fraudulently obtain Social Security disability benefits....

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article53792465.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article53792465.html#storylink=cpyA third employee, Arnaldo Oscar Jimenez, 57, of Hialeah, also allegedly recruited individuals who wanted to fraudulently obtain Social Security disability benefits.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article53792465.html#storylink=cpy
Posted by Charles T. Hall at 2 comments:
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Jan 17, 2016

Senator Mikulski Brings Home The Bacon

     From the Baltimore Sun:
The Woodlawn headquarters of the Social Security Administration is set to receive a $150 million overhaul to remove dangerous lead paint and asbestos, rip out corroded plumbing and modernize the 10-story building for 21st-century technology. ...
Officials declined requests by The Baltimore Sun to tour the building but outlined plans to update the 250,000-square-foot facility with new elevators, modern office layouts with more open space, and windows and insulation that better regulate the temperature. The building is not open to the public. ...
Design work is beginning, he said. No timetable has been set for the project, and [Chris] Molander [the agency official in charge of facilities] said he could not estimate how long it will take. ...
[Senator Barbara] Mikulski, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Social Security workers at the recent gathering that they deserve a better work environment than the Altmeyer Building.
"We know it's been lead paint, it's asbestos, electrical circuits are out of date," she said. "We're very concerned about your health, about your safety. A modern social insurance company — which you are — deserves to be in a facility where we can bring in the technology that makes your job more efficient and helps you be more effective."
Molander said the building poses no threat to workers' health or safety. All of the asbestos is contained (most of it is in the ceilings), and the lead paint is not "an overriding concern," he said. If coated properly, he said, the old paint won't cause problems. ...
     Meanwhile, claimants wait two years for hearings.
Posted by Charles T. Hall at 5 comments:
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Jan 16, 2016

Most Of Eric Conn's Former Clients Aren't Taking Advantage Of Free Legal Help

     From WSAZ:
Attorneys representing hundreds of people fighting to keep their federal disability benefits worry those benefits may disappear for most of them if they do not have a lawyer.  
Last year, the Social Security Administration ordered nearly 1,800 people to attend hearings to determine whether they should continue receiving disability checks. Many have already gone through with the hearings and are now waiting on the results. 
The people are former clients of Floyd County lawyer Eric C. Conn. ... 
Thursday night, some of those people gathered in Prestonsburg, where they heard from the legal team trying to help them keep their disability payments. 
The prevailing theme was encouraging disability recipients who have not hired an attorney to represent them at their re-determination hearings to do so. ...
[Ned] Pillersdorf [who is handling a class action lawsuit on the terminations] estimates around 1,000 disability recipients do not have legal representation for their hearings and, as a result of not seeking counsel, will lose their hearings. ... 
"The suicide chatter is way up," Pillersdorf said. "It was especially bad around Christmas. Unfortunately people have got this unfortunate response that suicide is somehow a rational response to losing their benefits. We want to reassure people their lawyers are doing everything they can to help them." ...
     It would be great if the other 1,000 or so former clients of Eric Conn were to seek legal help. The problem is that at this point there wouldn't be nearly enough volunteer attorneys to represent them all. By this point, it's almost too late. Virtually all of these cases are now scheduled for hearings.
Posted by Charles T. Hall at No comments:
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Jan 15, 2016

Beware! Social Security Is Using Docutector!

     From a contracting notice posted by the Social Security Administration:
This is ... notification of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) intent to issue, on a sole-source basis, a firm fixed-price contract to D.R. Myers Distributing Co., Inc. dba Driver's License Guide Company, to renew an electronic resource subscription entitled Docutector.
Docutector is an online document forgery detection database. SSA's Office of Media Management (OMM) will use the Docutector subscription as a visual standard to inspect documents submitted by claimants to detect and investigate fraud.
     I think the last dubious document case I saw at Social Security was a family Bible used to prove date of birth. The questionable entry was written by a ballpoint pen supposedly as a contemporaneous  recording of a birth that happened well before ballpoint pens were invented. Most of my readers have no experience with date of birth determinations, much less the concept of using a family Bible to prove date of birth. To explain, states weren't requiring birth certificates until about 100 years ago. Even after birth certificates were required, for some years there were still plenty of home births where no birth certificate was issued. School records, insurance records, census records and entries in family Bibles were used in these cases to prove date of birth for Social Security purposes. Laboriously gathering documents to make a date of birth determination used to be a significant part of what the Social Security Administration did. That's pretty rare these days, except for some immigrants, because all those folks who lacked birth certificates are now on Social Security benefits or deceased. My point is that fraudulent documents are quite uncommon at Social Security these days.
Posted by Charles T. Hall at 4 comments:
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Jan 14, 2016

Income Inequality Hurting Social Security Trust Funds

     From The Atlantic:


The financial picture for Social Security isn’t as dire as some describe: Without any modifications to its funding, Social Security will generate enough revenue to pay for three-quarters of promised benefits. [There is enough revenue and reserves to pay full benefits until 2034.]

The main reason it’ll fall short, though—the reason that that remaining one-quarter of benefits hasn’t yet materialized—is that the method of funding for Social Security was calibrated to an America with much less inequality than the nation currently has.

Since the late ‘70s, most of the growth in workers’ earnings has gone to the people who have made the most money. To be precise, the wages of the top 1 percent of workers have grown 138 percent since 1979, while the wages for the bottom 90 percent grew only 15 percent during that period.
If all of that income growth were taxed evenly, Social Security would have no shortfall. But it’s not taxed evenly: Any dollar that an American earns beyond $118,500 is, under current laws, not subject to Social Security taxes. In other words, someone who makes $118,500 this year is going to pay the same amount in Social Security taxes as someone who makes $4 million this year.

Posted by Charles T. Hall at 11 comments:
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Jan 13, 2016

Will SSA Accept Driver's Licenses From Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington As ID?

     A vaild ID is required to enter a Social Security hearing room. The REAL ID Act sets forth requirements for acceptable IDs. Generally, people have used their driver's licenses. However, I'm reading that driver's licenses from the states of Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington are not in compliance with the REAL ID Act requirements and may no longer be used to gain access to federal facilities. I'm getting this from a local newspaper article concerning access to Fort Bragg but I believe this should apply in the same way to access to Social Security hearings. Is there a problem in those states? This could be a big headache for Social Security and claimants from those states.
Posted by Charles T. Hall at 19 comments:
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