Good Contracting Move?

     When a Social Security Administrative Law Judge holds a hearing, there's always someone helping him or her -- escorting the claimant and attorney into the hearing room, operating the recording equipment, taking notes, etc. I've heard this person referred to as a hearing recorder or monitor or reporter. Some years ago, the hearing recorder was a regular Social Security employee. Then the agency began using contract workers to do the job. The hearing recorders were paid a set amount per hearing -- as long as the claimant showed up for the hearing. When my client failed to show up for the hearing, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed! The contracting was done on an individual basis with each hearing recorder.

     We've now heard that Social Security has decided to contract with a firm which will hire and manage hearing recorders to provide this service generally. I don't know how widespread this is. It covers at least all the hearing offices in North Carolina. This will start at the beginning of 2018. 

     The contractor that has been hired has informed the current hearing recorders in North Carolina that they can continue the work but that they'll be paid 40% less. Almost all of the hearing recorders I've talked to have told me they're not interested in taking a 40% pay cut and working for the new contractor.

     Like a lot of jobs, the hearing recorder job may seem easy to perform and not that important -- until you get someone performing the job badly. I'm concerned that because the job will pay so much less that the new people hired will be unable to provide quality service. I know that at best there's going to be problems and frustration come January.

I'd Call This Answer Seriously Incomplete -- Why?

     From app., some newspaper that doesn't want you to know its name or where it's located:

In my daughter’s senior year of high school, she had an accident that paralyzed her. It doesn’t look like she will be able to work in the near future, and since she has never worked she hasn’t paid Social Security taxes. Can Social Security still help her?

Your daughter may qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. SSI is a needs-based program paid for by general revenue taxes and run by Social Security. It helps provide monetary support to people who are disabled and who have not paid enough in Social Security taxes to qualify for Social Security disability benefits. To qualify for SSI, a person must be disabled, and have limited resources and income. For more information, visit our website and check out our publication, “You May Be Able To Get SSI,” at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs.

Valerie Fisher is district manager of the Social Security office at 3310 Route 66, Neptune, NJ 07753. Call 800-772-1213 for information.

     This may have been prepared by some press officer at Social Security rather than by Ms. Fisher. In any case, it's an incomplete answer. It's the sort of thing that is often, perhaps usually, missed. What is it?

That's A Bleak Image

     I think that half the press articles about Social Security use this same bleak stock photo. Why can't they do better? Is that how we want people thinking about Social Security? Here's a few links to give you an idea: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA Today, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. What would a better illustration look like?

Lest We Forget

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

From For The Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon

Social Security Numbers Must Go?

     From Tech Crunch:

Eyeing more secure alternatives to Social Security numbers, lawmakers in the U.S. are looking abroad. Today [November 8], the Senate Commerce Committee questioned former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Verizon chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia and both the current and former CEOs of Equifax on how to protect consumers against major data breaches. The consensus was that Social Security numbers have got to go. ...

“Some combination of digital multi-factor authentication… is the right path,” former Equifax CEO Richard Smith said when asked about such a program.

Multiple times throughout the hearing, Brazil’s Infraestrutura de Chaves Públicas system of citizen IDs through digital certificates came up as a potential model for the U.S. as it moves forward. In this model, a certificate lasts for three years at maximum and can be used to issue a digital signature much like written signatures are used now. Unlike its counterpart in the U.S., these identity accounts can be revoked and reissued easily through an established national protocol. ...

Last month, White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce made it clear that the Trump administration is also interested in abandoning Social Security numbers in favor of a more secure, more digital form of identification, stating that the form of ID has “outlived its usefulness.”

ODAR Caseload Analysis Report

     Obtained by the National Organization of Social Security Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in their member newsletter, which isn't available online:

Click on image to view full size

Online Wage Reporting For SSDI Recipients

     An announcement from the Social Security Administration:

Social Security has expanded its online services to allow people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits and their representative payees to report wages securely online. This service is available through our existing my Social Security portal. ...

This service will be available for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients in the future. SSI recipients should continue to report wages through SSI Mobile Wage Reporting, SSI Telephone Wage Reporting, or by visiting a local field office.

Immigrants Less Likely To Receive Social Security Disability

     From a press release:

No matter where they came from, people born outside the United States but working here are much less likely to receive Social Security Disability Insurance benefits than those born in the U.S. or its territories. Foreign-born adults, according to a study published in the December issue of the journal Demography, are less likely to report health-related impediments to working, to be covered by work-disability insurance, and to apply for disability benefits.

The researchers used data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to determine the prevalence of work disability and records from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program to determine the incidence. They found that over the ten-year period from 2001 to 2010, about 6.56 people per thousand born in the U.S. received benefits through the SSDI program.

Foreign-born individuals make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, and a somewhat larger proportion (16.7 percent) of the U.S. labor force. They are, however, significantly less likely to report work disability and to receive work disability benefits. The researchers found that only 4.16 per thousand foreign-born men and 4.36 per thousand foreign-born women were approved for benefits. ...

     I don't think this means much. Many of the native born Americans who end up receiving Social Security disability benefits have health problems that were coming on for a long time, sometimes since birth. People who emigrate are unlikely to have serious, chronic health problems at the time they emigrate. If they had been sick, they probably would have stayed in their native countries. The addition of healthy productive workers is one of the many ways that America benefits from immigration.