Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

This is the White House. Melania says they look beautiful in person.

Merry Christmas!

Social Security Seeking Comments On Consideration Of Pain

     From an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which Social Security will publish in Monday's Federal Register:

We are soliciting public input to ensure that the manner in which we consider pain in adult and child disability claims under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act (Act) remains aligned with contemporary medicine and health care delivery practices. Specifically, w e are requesting public comment s and supporting data related to the consideration of pain and documentation of pain in the medical evidence we use in connection with claims for benefits . We will use the responses to the questions below and any relevant research and data we obtain or receive to determine whether and how we should propose revisions to our current policy regarding the evaluation of pain.

     Remember, Democrats will control the House of Representatives in three weeks. Could the Social Security Administration go ahead with something terrible? Sure, but don't bet on it. Even if they try, they probably can't complete action on it before January 20, 2021.

SSA Seeking Comments On Rep Payees

     From a request for comments posted by Social Security in today's Federal Register:

We are requesting information on the appropriateness of our order of preference lists for selecting representative payees (payees) and the effectiveness of our policy and operational procedures in determining when to change a payee. We are seeking this information to determine whether and how we should make any changes to our representative payee program to help  ensure that we select suitable payees for our beneficiaries.

How Does The Economy Affect Disability Claims?

     The abstract of The Effect of Economic Conditions on the Disability Insurance Program: Evidence from the Great Recession by Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen and Alexander Strand:

We examine the effect of cyclical job displacement during the Great Recession on the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. Exploiting variation in the severity and timing of the recession across states, we estimate the effect of unemployment on SSDI applications and awards. We find the Great Recession induced nearly one million SSDI applications that otherwise would not have been filed, of which 41.8 percent were awarded benefits, resulting in over 400,000 new beneficiaries who made up 8.9 percent of all SSDI entrants between 2008-2012. More than one-half of the recession-induced awards were made on appeal. The induced applicants had less severe impairments than the average applicant. Only 9 percent had the most severe, automatically-qualifying impairments, 33 percent had functional impairments and no transferable skills, and the rest were denied for having insufficiently severe impairments and/or transferable skills. Our estimates imply the Great Recession increased claims processing costs by $2.960 billion during 2008-2012, and SSDI benefit obligations by $55.730 billion in present value, or $97.365 billion including both SSDI and Medicare benefits.

     I think that the factors that affect the filing of disability claims are far more complex than these authors have contemplated. It's obvious from statements made in the body of this study that the authors visualize people being laid off and immediately filing disability claims with Social Security but anyone involved in the disability claim process knows that that's not the way things usually worked then, now or anytime. Whatever the reasons for stopping work, only a small minority of disability claimants file their claims immediately after stopping work. There's usually a gap of at least several months and sometimes several years before people file their claims. When asked why they waited so long, people often answer that they kept hoping their condition would improve. The length of the gap between work ending and disability claim being filed can certainly be affected by the economic status of other people. The disability claim may be precipitated by the layoff of a family member, such as a spouse, who had been supporting the disabled person.
     The length of the gap between leaving work due to illness or injury and filing a disability claim may also be influenced by perceptions of how difficult it is to obtain Social Security disability benefits. One of the reasons people delay filing a claim is that they perceive, somewhat accurately, that it's difficult to be approved for Social Security disability benefits. I know that's not a rational way to act but people are often irrational. I'm pretty sure that the public perception of how tough it is to be approved isn't stable. I got the strong impression that in 2008 and 2009, after Barack Obama was elected President, that people thought it was becoming less difficult to be approved. They were wrong. It didn't get less difficult to get approved but that's what people thought and their misconception affected their behavior. Of course, Obama's election happened at a time when the economy was crashing and was, in part, due to that crash making it impossible to sort out everything that was going on.
     The authors of this study seem to visualize people being laid off from their jobs and then marching in to file disability claims. There are some disability claimants who have recently lost their jobs due to a general layoff but I'd estimate that at less than 10%. Most people who file disability claims, both then and now, made the decision on their own to leave employment due to illness or injury. Some of these decisions may be indirectly induced by their employer's business circumstances. Businesses in financial trouble often try to get more productivity out of their employees. An employee who could handle their job as it had been normally performed becomes unable to perform it when more is expected from them. Some who file disability claims have been fired because they could not do the job. Employer decisions on when to let an employee go on medical grounds can be affected by an employer's business circumstances. Someone who is a borderline employee in good times becomes an unnecessary burden in bad times. 
     I think this whole subject deserves more research and that sociologists need to be involved. At the least, someone needs to do research on how the gap between the date of becoming disabled and the date of filing a disability claim has changed over time. Social Security already has that data. It's just a matter of mining it from their databases. My guess is that that gap went way down in 2008 and 2009.

Representation Rate On Disability Claims

     Below is a report on the rate at which claimants were represented at various levels of appeal on Social Security disability claims in Fiscal Years (FY) 2016 and 2017. This was obtained by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in their newsletter, which is not available online. These numbers have to be as of the date an appeal is filed rather that as of all pending cases. Otherwise, there would be a much greater total number listed for the hearing level.

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     Here is a chart of the representation rate at the hearing level in earlier years. Note that the total representation rate by attorneys and non-attorneys at hearings was around 95% in 2010 as opposed to the 80% shown above. The numbers aren't directly comparable since the 80% figure probably doesn't include claimants who obtained representation after filing a request for hearing but it does make me wonder if the representation rate has gone down. My guess is that it has gone down because of the decrease in allowance rates since 2010 and the effective reduction in attorney fees because the fee cap hasn't been raised. Those who represent claimants have to be more careful about the cases we take on. What was once a marginal case we would took on is now a case we don't take on.

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     By the way, every time I post something about the inadequacy of fees for representing Social Security claimants I always get one or two posts saying something like "If the fees are so low, why don't you just stop representing Social Security disability claimants?" I strongly suspect these posts come from paid shills who are representing interests which are hostile to Social Security in general and to Social Security disability benefits in particular. Really, why would anyone want Social Security disability claimants to be unrepresented unless they felt some animus towards Social Security? Of course, the answer to the question of why I don't stop representing Social Security claimants is that I can still make money doing it; I just have to be much more careful about who I represent. I'm turning away way too many claimants whom I believe have meritorious cases. I fear that many of the claimants I turn away don't pursue their cases because they can't find representation. I'm sure this pleases those who pay the shills but it's not good public policy.

At Least They Improved The 800 Number Service

     My recent post linking to an article about a woman who had tried and tried without success to get through to Social Security by telephone brought this response from a field office manager:

Hi Charles, your message on phones and the individual who called the field really resonated with me as a manager of medium size social security office.

Effective two weeks ago, the SSA administration made the decision to shift call forwarding away from field offices. What does this mean? Essentially the option to go to the 800# number is removed.

We were told that this was done due to an average call time of 35 min at the 800#. Essentially the 800 was not making their PSI (public service indicator).

The result? The result is catastrophic in some office. We've seen our call volume essentially double.  To give you an idea - some regions in the nation are getting to 50% of their calls. For an office like mine, it essentially means losing 2 bodies to the phones.  I'm not complaining but it does seem very short sighted to make this change....when this will single handedly delay things in day to day operations - i.e. appeals, overpayment process , etc.

As you know we struggle to keep up with these alone - this additional change - seems entirely misguided. They have simply shifted calls to meet   a goal - truly a mess. Sorry to remain anonymous but i worry about the repercussion of sharing this information

Sincerely - DM who is worried.

     I have been able to confirm that this report is accurate and that the problem is national.