Maybe Some Of These Cases Should Be Approved At Lower Levels?

     From a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO):

Allowance rates—the rate at which Social Security Administration (SSA) administrative law judges allowed disability benefits to be paid when claimants appealed—varied across judges, even after holding constant certain characteristics of claimants, judges, hearing offices, and other factors that could otherwise explain differences in allowance rates. Specifically, GAO estimated that the allowance rate could vary by as much as 46 percentage points if different judges heard a typical claim (one that was average in all other factors GAO analyzed). SSA officials said that this level of variation is not surprising, given the complexity of appeals and judicial discretion. Nonetheless, the variation declined by 5 percentage points between fiscal years 2007 and 2015 (see figure), a change officials attributed to enhanced quality assurance efforts and training for judges. GAO also identified various factors that were associated with a greater chance that a claimant would be allowed benefits. In addition to characteristics related to disability criteria, such as the claimant's impairment and age, GAO found that claimants who had representatives, such as an attorney or family member, were allowed benefits at a rate nearly 3 times higher than those without representatives. Other factors did not appear related to allowance rates, such as the percentage of backlogged claims in a hearing office. ...

From fiscal years 2007 through 2015, most claimants (77 percent) had an attorney representative, and 12 percent had a nonattorney representative. ...

  

Note the high approval rate in MS cases. I was just  talking about MS cases recently. I've also talked about intellectual deficiency cases a lot also.

Washinton Post Decries Stigma It Helps Perpetuate

     From the Washington Post:

... One of the most misunderstood aspects of the federal disability programs — Social Security Disability Insurance, for those who work, and Supplemental Security Insurance for the disabled poor — has to do with working. Some recipients subsist on benefits alone, unable to work at all because of their disability, and some find paid part-time work. (Both programs come with health care — Medicare with SSDI and Medicaid with SSI.)

Others work for pay up to modest income limits allowed by the programs or are seeking employment. Many others perform unpaid volunteer work. Yet whether they work for money or not, disability recipients are often stigmatized in our work-obsessed culture. ...

     This is rich coming from the Washington Post which has been running article after article portraying disability benefits recipients as shiftless drug-addicted hillbillies.

Tales Of Life On The Lam

     From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

To the saga of Eric C. Conn’s journey from wealthy Eastern Kentucky attorney to fugitive felon captured at a Pizza Hut in Central America, add this nugget:

Conn says he used a puppy to cross the border from Mexico into Guatemala, thinking it would help him get past security officers....

In his first communication with the media since being captured, Conn, 57, sent the Herald-Leader a 42-page, two-part handwritten letter with his account of why he decided to flee sentencing ...

Conn, who is in solitary confinement in the Grayson County jail while awaiting trial on escape and other charges, also called the newspaper from jail.

It’s a tale worthy of Conn’s larger-than-life persona, including how he pretended to be engaged to a woman so authorities wouldn’t check his identification while on a bus, and how he says police in Honduras, where he was captured Dec. 2, offered to let him go in return for a bribe he couldn’t cover.

Conn said having to look over his shoulder while a fugitive was miserable.

“Honestly, honestly, it was horrible,” he said. “I never got one true minute of relaxation.” ...

In his letter, Conn called his decision to abscond foolhardy, but he said he did it after becoming terrified of the prospect of being raped in prison. ...

Conn said he started reading about sexual abuse in prisons and became so fearful that one night, he “began to shake all over like a man on the verge of frostbite.” ...

     If you read this account, it's obvious that Conn had essentially no plan for what he would do after he crossed the border into Mexico. It's a wonder he got as far as he did.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article193706559.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article193706559.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article193706559.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article193706559.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article193706559.html#storylink=cpy

The Numbers Are In

     Social Security has posted final numbers on disability claims filed and approved in 2017 as well as the number drawing disability benefits. Claims filed decreased by 6% in 2017. This was the seventh straight year of declining claims. There's been a 26% decline in the number of claims filed since the peak in 2010. The number of claims approved actually went up by 2.4% in 2017, the first yearly increase since 2010. Still, the number of claims approved is down 28% from the peak. The number of claimants in current payment status declined by 1.29% in 2017. The termination rate increased to 9.30% which is the highest of any year presented. However, it should be noted that many of those terminations were because claimants had aged off disability benefits and on to retirement benefits.

 

Nope, Sorry, This Letter Won't Do Any Good Because The Backlogs Aren't Due To Incompetence Or Lack Of Caring

     From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Four Philadelphia-area congressmen sent a letter Monday to the acting chief of the Social Security Administration asking that the agency address the sometimes years-long delays for Philadelphia-area residents seeking disability-benefits hearings.

The letter to acting Commissioner Nancy Berryhill, signed by U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, Dwight Evans, Robert Brady, and Donald Norcross, all Democrats, came in response to an article in Sunday’s Inquirer that reported that applicants in the city are waiting an average of 26 months for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) appeal hearings. That’s the longest average waiting time for any city in the country. Applicants in adjacent counties in South Jersey and Pennsylvania also are experiencing average wait times of 20 months or longer.

“While we are certainly sympathetic to the budgetary constraints of your agency, we are deeply concerned by the number of individuals subject to undue stress and health risks brought on by reports of bureaucratic inefficiency,” the letter said. ...

What's The Alternative?

     From Salon:

Nearly five months after an unprecedented security breach at the credit rating firm Equifax exposed Social Security numbers and other data, making some 147 million Americans vulnerable to potential identity theft and fraud attacks, the Social Security Administration continues to use an identity security system devised by Equifax for the MySocialSecurity online portal.

Equifax was awarded a no-bid $10 million contract back in early 2016, as the company boasted at the time, “to help the SSA manage risk and mitigate fraud for the mySocialSecurity system, a personalized portal for customers to access some of SSA’s services such as the online statement.”  ...

[Social Security] Press officer Mark Hinkle would only tell Salon that “Equifax is not, and has never been, responsible for the authentication of mySocialSecurity users, or building, maintaining or supporting any of Social Security’s platforms.” 

That response suggests that, in fact, all the financially strapped SSA actually got from Equifax for its $10 million was a bunch of security questions to ask those trying to prove their identity before accessing the online customer portal.... Based on the questions actually found on the site, it would appear that Equifax offered a duplicate version of the questions it uses for its own flawed and hacked customer access security system for use by the SSA’s MySocialSecurity Portal, and no doubt the IRS’ online portal too. ...

     The Social Security Administration has been under enormous pressure to move its operations online. There are Congressional hearings where members of Congress seem incredulous that the agency even has field offices. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) keeps pressing to move everything online. If Uber can do it, why can't Social Security? This is based upon a naive belief that Social Security's operations are relatively simple which they might be if the agency only had to take retirement claims. However, many of Social Security's operations -- like disability, survivor and SSI claims -- are way too complicated to be handled online. It's sort of like insisting that a funeral parlor move all its operations online. Sorry, but there's that pesky body you have to deal with somehow as well as bereaved relatives who demandTLC.
     The EquiFax situation isn't as dire as this article suggests. EquiFax isn't getting any data from Social Security. It all goes in one direction from EquiFax to Social Security. =
     I can't say whether the authentication process Social Security is using is adequate but I don't know what the alternative would be other than to give up on online services. That would be fine with me as long as Congress gives Social Security adequate resources but that's not going to happen.

Attorney Advisor Program Extended

     From today's Federal Register:

We are extending for six months our rule authorizing attorney advisors to conduct certain prehearing proceedings and to issue fully favorable decisions. The current rule is scheduled to expire on February 5, 2018. In this final rule, we are extending the sunset date to August 3, 2018. We are making no other substantive changes.

     However, there have been few attorney advisor decisions in recent years and none recently. If Democrats were to take control of the House of Representatives in this November's election, expect the attorney advisor program to ramp up quickly. The reason is pretty clear. Social Security officials know that Congressional Republicans don't really care about backlogs but do want as few disability claims approved as possible.

The Hearing Backlog And MS

     The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting on the effects of Social Security's horrible hearing backlog. Note that the article focuses on the case of a young woman suffering from multiple sclerosis. Where I practice they seem to be turning down almost all the MS cases at the initial and reconsideration levels. Maybe ten years ago I might take on one MS case a year. Now I may take on one a month.  That's me personally. I'm sure my firm takes on many more than I take on personally. The disease didn't change. The definition of disability didn't change. The agency's regulations didn't change in a way that would especially affect MS. Social Security never announced a change. However, it's clear to me that some person or persons decided to change the agency's practices and then used the secretive quality assurance process to effect the change. In the end, I win the vast majority of the MS cases but there's way too much unnecessary suffering in the meantime and too many claimants who get so discouraged that they drop their cases without ever consulting with an attorney. They don't go back to work. They just rely upon other income or on family and friends. More than a few just get poorer and poorer for years before finally becoming so desperate that they file a new claim and pursue appeals.  MS isn't a rare disease but it's not so common that I should be seeing about one new MS each month.  This is a terrible way to treat very sick people.