Poor Rural Areas Generate Disability Claims

     The Cadillac [MI] News reports on the incidence of Social Security disability receipt within the state of Michigan. Not surprisingly, to me at least, disability hits hardest in poorer rural areas with older populations. Many of the healthy young people leave those areas to take jobs where they can find them. The population left behind is older and sicker. Of course, a higher percentage of the remaining population files disability claims.

     By the way, what I've seen in North Carolina is that these poorer rural areas eventually generate fewer disability claims -- once the local population is greatly diminished, as it surely will be over time, since there aren't jobs to be had. The older, sicker population just dies off.

Emergency Message On Casey v. Berryhill

     The Social Security Administration has issued Emergency Message EM-18004 on the implementation of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Casey v. Berryhill which provides that a claimant may obtain judicial review of an Appeals Council order dismissing a request for review as untimely on the grounds that there was not good cause for a late request for review. However, at the moment they're only wanting to identify cases potentially affected rather than actually acting upon them.

Same Sex Marriage Finally Recognized

     Social Security is still sorting out same sex marriage issues. Here's a case where a marriage was finally recognized. The issue was whether the marriage was recognized at the time that one of the parties to the marriage died.

Conn Reviews Causing Stress

     The upcoming reviews of the cases of 2,000 more former clients of Eric Conn are already causing stress. At this point, we don't know exactly who will be reviewed. In the last round, 53% of the former Conn clients kept their benefits despite the reviews and many more were approved on new claims. In the end, I wonder how many of those reviewed will actually lose benefits for good. My guess is that it will be less than 25% of those reviewed.

Daniel Bernath Dies In Plane Crash

     Daniel Bernath, who used to be an attorney representing Social Security disability claimants, has died in a plane crash. Take a look at this old post on this blog. Bernath had threatened to sue me for libel if I didn't make that correction! To give you an idea of what he was like take a look at this old blog post as well as this one. I had great sympathy for the Administrative Law Judges who had to cope with such an obnoxious person. I don't understand how anyone comes to be like Bernath.

To Be Continued

     That big Senate bill that settles all budget matters for the next two years that you've been reading about -- it's not quite what it's advertised to be. For one thing, it actually only funds the government through March 23. For another, it's only a budget bill. Budget bills only set top line limits. They don't specify what each agency gets. That's done in appropriations bills. There could easily be a partial government shutdown over one or more of the appropriations bills and the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that includes Social Security is always the most contentious of the appropriations bills. So, we don't know how much Social Security will get and we can't say that the threat of a government shutdown affecting Social Security has passed.

Backlogged In Chicago

     From a TV station in Chicago:

A widow in desperate need of her husband’s survivor benefits from Social Security is stone-walled for five months, until 2 Investigator Pam Zekman gets involved.

“I was very angry, very upset and I felt that the government let me down,” Darlene Groth, who was recently widowed, tells Zekman. ...

Groth had serious problems after she applied for survivors benefits from Social Security last  August.  She was told the money would  arrive in 30 to 45 days, but it didn’t.

Groth called and came to the Social Security offices in Waukegan multiple times to find out what was going on with her benefits. ...

Within days after the [the TV station] called the Social Security Administration, the sum of $4,594 was deposited in her bank account for benefits due back to August. Her $1,648 benefit check is set to arrive this month. ...

A Social Security spokesperson says the normal processing time is about two weeks and Groth’s five-month delay was due to “an oversight by an employee.”  He did not answer questions about exactly what the oversight was, adding they are unaware of any similar complaints. ...

     I've got a similar case, except worse. A recent widow came to me for help with her disability claim. I noticed that she had a couple of minor children and asked if they were getting child's benefits on her late husband's Social Security number. She said they weren't his children but the children of her first husband and that she had been told by Social Security that they couldn't get benefits on her second husband's account. I asked if her second husband, the one who had died, had supported these stepchildren. She told me he had supported them 100% since she hadn't been working the last couple of years before he died and there was no child support from the natural father of the children. I told her that the children were definitely entitled to benefits on their stepfather's account. She applied for the benefits. The Social Security employee who took the claim, like me, was surprised that the widow had been misinformed. That's more than five months ago and the children still haven't been paid. We keep calling and calling.
     As I've written before, I know there are horrible backlogs at the Birmingham Payment Center, the one I deal with mostly. Routine work takes forever. The problem seems to affect retirement and survivor claims that are even slightly out of the ordinary rather than disability claims. This piece from the Chicago TV station suggests there are horrible backlogs at other Payment Centers.

Rep Payee Bill Passes House

     From a press release:

The House voted 396-0 today to pass H.R. 4547, the Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018 – bipartisan legislation to strengthen and improve the representative payee program to better protect vulnerable Social Security beneficiaries who are unable to manage their own funds. ...

CLICK HERE for the legislative text of the Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018.

CLICK HERE to read the Ways and Means Committee's technical explanation outlining H.R. 4547, and CLICK HERE to read the letter that the Committee sent to the Social Security Administration afterwards.

CLICK HERE to learn more about how this bipartisan bill helps millions of Americans.