Study On Social Security Disability Benefits

     From Trends in SSDI Benefit Receipt: Are More Recent Birth Cohorts Entering Sooner and Receiving Benefits Longer? by Yonatan Ben-Shalom, David Stapelton, Alex Bryce, Mathematica Policy Research Working Paper 55: 

We provide the first publicly available statistics on the extent to which recent successive birth cohorts enter Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and on cross-cohort trends in the average number of years of SSDI benefit receipt among cohort members. We find that the percentage of each birth cohort entering SSDI by ages 45, 50, and 55 is increasing. Mean years of benefit receipt among all individuals in the birth cohort has grown even more rapidly, due to the combined effects of entry at younger ages and lower mortality after entry. Our findings account for immigration, an important factor that is often ignored in discussions about growth in the SSDI rolls. Annual SSDI awards have declined sharply since 2010, after rising rapidly on the heels of the Great Recession. During the same period, the birth cohort data show a decline in SSDI entry by age 40, and a diminished rate of growth by age 55. Still, in 2014—the last year of our data—the rates of entry by ages 45 and 50 are well above what they were 10 years earlier. Viewing the data from the perspective of cohorts shows that there remains an urgent need to test and adopt policies to reduce avoidable labor force exit and SSDI entry by workers who experience work-threatening medical problems. 

Trends in SSDI entry by age 40, 45, 50, and 55, as percentage of the size of the birth cohort in the SSA area population at age 20. Click to view full size.

     Those on the right will say that this proves that it's too easy to get on Social Security disability. However, it's not. It never has been and it's certainly not now.
     The problem is the near demise of manufacturing in the United States. People with low cognitive abilities or chronic psychiatric problems or other nagging health problems used to be able to hold down jobs in manufacturing, perhaps not as steadily as they would have liked but well enough to avoid having to file disability claims. Without manufacturing, these people have only a marginal ability to be employed. Jobs like Certified Nurse Attendant (CNA) at a nursing home or maintenance mechanic doing minor building repairs are hard to do if you have a bad back. Employers in these fields are less likely to put up with depressed employees with spotty attendance or employees with limited cognitive abilities who just can't seem to understand or remember how the job is supposed to be done. Those "simple, routine, repetitive" jobs aren't plentiful these days.
     If you work in an office, you may think that anyone can but that's not so. Those people you went to high school with who just barely managed to graduate or who didn't graduate, you probably didn't hang out with them. You didn't understand their problems then. You certainly don't understand them now. Sometimes, the problems that forced those students to the margins in high school go away or get better. Mostly, they stay the same or get worse. Those people are prime candidates for becoming disabled.
     The decline is American manufacturing has been properly blamed for the opioid epidemic, Rust Belt unemployment and the election of Donald Trump. This study is just finding another effect of the decline in manufacturing.

The Word Is Getting Out

     Investment News reports on the brutal backlogs at Social Security and on the reason for them -- a lack of an adequate operating budget.

Waiting In Missouri

     From a television station in Bloomfield, MO:

Every day, Susan Babis wonders how she's going to pay even the smallest bills.

Babis lives with schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder and said she is unable to hold a job. Even a $3 co-pay for her medications forces her to rely on friends. ...

Babis applied for Social Security disability benefits in July 2016. More than a year and a half later, she still hasn't had a hearing to determine whether she'll receive them. The government denied her application and she filed an appeal in January 2017. Earlier this year, she was informed she was scheduled for a hearing this September.

Babis isn't alone. 

The Social Security Administration's own data show an average wait time of 16 months at the agency's facilities in Springfield and Kansas City, 18 months in Columbia and 20 months in St. Louis. ...

The Social Security Administration turned down a request for an on-camera interview for this story. It also never responded to a request for the number of Missourians currently awaiting disability claims.

Former Conn Client's Case Argued In CA6

     The audio recording of the oral argument before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Hicks v. Commissioner of SSA is now available online. This is the first case to reach a Court of Appeals concerning the legal issues presented by Social Security's unprecedented reviews of the cases of former clients of Eric Conn.

Quite Rare?

     From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Q: Last month I received a letter from Social Security telling me how to access the online account I had just established. The letter also told me to dial an 800 number or visit a Social Security office if I had not opened such an account. Two days later I received a second letter about my change of address request.

I had done neither of these, so I went to the Akron Social Security office. The people there were friendly and professional. They deleted the online account and disallowed the change to a San Diego address. They also told me that my direct-deposit bank information had not been compromised.

I asked whether it would be a good idea to open a legitimate online account and they helped me do so.

Two things they were vague about: How did the scammer get my information and what could he or she accomplish with the bogus account. They also were unsure as to whether Social Security Administration would pursue this matter further.

The 800 number in the letter is answered by a robot receptionist and it could not respond to my statement, "I did not open an online account." This motivated me to drive to Akron.

D.S., Hudson

A: It's a good thing --  a really good thing -- you didn't ignore that letter. I talked to the Social Security Administration about your problem. They said that, fortunately, near disasters like what you encountered don't happen often.
"Our anti-fraud activities identify attempts and make the type of activity you are asking about very rare," said Doug Nguyen, regional spokesman for the Social Security Administration. "The agency employs a multi-faceted approach towards fraud prevention and regularly performs data analytics against (legitimate) transactions to identify anomalous activity and take action." ...

OIG To Investigate Milwaukee Office Closure

     Social Security's Inspector General plans to investigate the closure of a field office in Milwaukee. I don't see how they could find that the agency complied with its own policies. 

One Vet's Struggle

     An Atlanta television station is reporting on one vet's struggle to get Social Security disability benefits. You must multiply this story by a million to begin to get a picture of what goes on at Social Security.

So What Kind Of Pumpkin Did Social Security Turn Into At Midnight?

Yeah, I know, I'm mixing metaphors. So?

     I've been looking at the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.  Here's what I've discovered.

     Under 5 U.S.C. §3345 upon a vacancy in an office that requires Senate approval, the President can designate a person to serve as an acting officeholder. If the President doesn't make such a designation, the "first assistant" to the departed officeholder becomes the acting officeholder. In the case of the Social Security Administration, President Obama established a plan of succession. President Trump could have altered that plan but didn't. Under that plan, Nancy Berryhill became acting Commissioner. However, under that statute there can only be an acting officeholder up to certain time limits and 5 U.S.C. §3347 makes it clear that there is no other process by which a person can become or stay an acting officeholder beyond those time limits.  Everyone is in agreement that that time period has passed for the office of Social Security Commissioner and that office is vacant.

     Once the time period has passed, 5 U.S.C. §3348(b)(1) says the office and the functions and duties of that office remain vacant until someone can properly qualify to become the officeholder. Under 5 U.S.C. 3348(a)(2)(A) the functions or duties of an office are defined as those established by statute and "required by statute to be performed by the applicable officer (and only that officer)." That means that Administrative Law Judges and Appeals Counsel members and other Social Security employees who are performing previously delegated duties are able to continue to perform their previously delegated duties during the vacancy of the office of Commissioner of Social Security. So can just about any other employee.

     However, what about duties that had not previously been delegated? Even though there's nothing in the statutes that would have prevented the Commissioner or Acting Commissioner from delegating essentially any of the duties of the office, I don't see how there's anybody available now to further delegate any duties.
     I don't think there's any published list of duties that the Commissioner of Social Security has and hasn't delegated. Probably, there's always been some fuzziness about this since it's not possible to know in advance every novel issue or circumstance that might come up. Here would be my best guess of some duties that would never have been delegated under normal circumstances:

• Firing, replacing or disciplining senior level employees
• Coordinating the activities of the various offices and individuals who report directly to the Commissioner 
• Deciding upon internal budget allocations
• Deciding upon staffing level and overtime allocations for Social Security's various parts
• Approving contracts over some predetermined dollar amount
• Approving agreements with employee unions
• Signing off on proposed or final regulations
• Settling major litigation
• Approving statements made to Congressional committees
• Approving requests for legislation or agency comments on pending legislation

     It is possible that Nancy Berryhill made some last minute delegations before her authority as Acting Commissioner expired so that there could be better continuity. If there were any such extraordinary delegations, I think it behooves Social Security to announce them.

    In any case, Social Security was already somewhat rudderless with Nancy Berryhill as Acting Commissioner (not that it was her fault) and is even more rudderless now. How rudderless may depend upon whether Nancy Berryhill made some extraordinary delegations of authority while still Acting Commissioner. There's also the question of how well those at the top at Social Security will work together with no one really in charge -- the "you're not my real mommy" problem if you will.