Drop What You're Doing If You Want To Become An ALJ

     The registry to apply to become a Social Security Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) is now open. I don't know how they're going to do it this time but on previous occasions the registry stayed open for only a few days. It may be years before the registry opens again.

Hearing Backlog Is At Record Level

     From the San Francisco Chronicle:

People who have applied for Social Security Disability Insurance and been turned down twice are having to wait a record number of days to get a hearing in front of a judge and receive a decision.

The average wait time is 596 days or 19½ months, up from 545 days in September and only 353 days in 2012. The backlog of cases pending a hearing stands at about 1.1 million, up from 700,000 in 2010. ...

News reports about disability insurance fraud — such as a 2013 episode of “60 Minutes” — make it seem like benefits are easy to get. President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has suggested that some recipients aren’t really disabled and the government could save billions by pushing them back into the workforce.

In reality, getting disability benefits can be arduous, and only about 37 percent of former workers who apply end up getting them. ...

The percentage of people who apply for a hearing and win has fallen to 46 percent from 64 percent six years ago ...

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True ...

     From the Detroit Free Press:

Here's some sorry news this summer: There's no secret cash stash out there to pay your utility bills or your old outstanding debts with the state.

Consumers are getting swept into some scams across the country that promise a way to use special bank routing numbers supposedly from the U.S. government to cover their bills. 

One website notes: "Pay all bills now with your no-longer secret Social Security Trust Account." ...

By re-examining the account numbers being used to pay bills, staff members noticed that individuals had been trying to pay old state debts by using routing numbers from two U.S. Department of Treasury bureaus — the financial management service and the bureau of public debt. ... 

Leix said the strategy seems to be one promoted by tax protest groups and others. ...

"It just won't work," Leix said. "It's just not a valid method of payment for any outstanding debt."  ...

People are being told that your Social Security number is all that you need to unlock payment from a “corporate account” that was established by the government in your name. ...

I'm Not Joking

     Social Security is in the pilot phase of developing DeDoop, a program that is supposed to remove duplicative medical records from the electronic files of Social Security disability claimants.

ODAR Workload And Performance Summary

     This was obtained from the Social Security Administration by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online.

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Be Careful What You Ask For

     I heard recently from an attorney who requested some medical records on his client from a hospital. The hospital sent the attorney a good deal more than he requested but it was all on his client. It came to 12,000 pages. If we didn't have regulations requiring that EVERTHING be submitted, the attorney would have culled out the records than hadn't been requested, records that weren't material to the determination of disability such as nurses notes, medication records, endless lab tests, etc, but he can't do that now. He's submitting the whole thing.

The Most Common Social Security Fraud

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

In May 2012, the Social Security Administration (SSA) introduced my Social Security — an Internet services portal that allows individuals to create a personal online account to access their own information. In January 2013, the Agency enhanced my Social Security to allow individuals to change their direct deposit bank information. Shortly after SSA made this change, the Agency and the Office of the Inspector General began receiving fraud allegations related to unauthorized direct deposit changes....

Based on our random samples, we estimated that $10.9 million in benefit payments for about 7,200 beneficiaries was misdirected in CYs [Calendar Years] 2014 through 2016. ...

We also estimated SSA prevented about $14.1 million in benefits from being misrouted from about 11,900 beneficiaries whose direct deposit bank account was changed without their authorization.

Comparing our analysis of the CY 2014 through 2016 data the Agency provided to our prior review of CY 2013 data showed that the amount of benefits misdirected through my Social Security decreased. Also, we made recommendations to SSA related to verifying the identities of my Social Security users in our September 2016 report. As a result, we are not making any additional recommendations for corrective action at this time. ...

The Evil OHO

     Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) will soon change its name to the Office of Hearings Operations (OHO). People will pronounce OHO as Oh-Ho. However, that is the same pronunciation as the Spanish word for eye, ojo. A friend who knows a good deal about these things tells me that the Spanish word ojo also has the connotation of evil eye in Mexican and Central American culture. There are many legal immigrants in the United States from Mexico and Central America who take the concept of the evil eye seriously. We'd better not confuse them by casually referring to Oh-Ho.