My First Social Security Scammer Robocall

     I got my first Social Security scammer robocall yesterday. The message told me that my Social Security account had been "frozen" because of illegal activity on the account in Texas. Of course, I just hung up. Don't fall for this.

Congressional Hearings On Trustees Report?

     In past years there were Congressional hearings on the annual report of Social Security's Board of Trustees on the state of the Trust Funds on the same day the reports were issued or shortly thereafter. So far this year no hearings have been announced. Maybe it's because the report was issued the day after Easter while Congress in in recess. Maybe there just isn't the interest this year.

Benefit Statements Are Missed

     From Mark Miller writing for Reuters:

It is one of the most important retirement documents you will ever receive - but fewer Americans are reviewing their Social Security benefit statement nowadays due to cost-cutting and a government push to online services that is falling short.

Until about a decade ago, all workers eligible for Social Security received a paper statement in the mail that provided useful projections of their benefits at various ages, along with reminders on the availability of disability benefits and Medicare enrollment information.

But the Social Security Administration (SSA) decided in 2010 to save money by eliminating most mailings of benefit statements. Instead, we would all be encouraged to obtain this information online.

It is now abundantly clear that this is not working out.

The number of workers accessing their statements online has been just a fraction of those who once were reached by paper statements. And the cost-benefit tradeoff is poor.

Forty-two million Americans have created online accounts with the SSA since they were first offered seven years ago, the agency says, compared with the 155 million paper statements that were mailed in 2010, before the cost-cutting began. Meanwhile, the number of online account-holders who accessed their statements fell dramatically in fiscal 2018, from 96 percent to 43 percent, according to a report issued in February by the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). ...

Some Academic Support For The Grid Regulations

     From The Relationship Between Occupational Requirements and SSDI Activity by Matthew S. Rutledge, Alice Zulkarnain, and Sara Ellen King:

Evaluations of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applications are based not just on poor health, but in most cases consider the vocational factors of age, education and work experience to determine whether individuals can work. These criteria indicate that SSDI applicants must not only be in poor health, but in poor health that actually conflicts with the requirements of their occupation (and other occupations). Yet little is known about the relationship between SSDI activity and the ability to meet occupational requirements. This study devises a Health Mismatch Index, which is the share of workers in an occupation citing health-related difficulties in the Survey of Income and Program Participation that would prevent them from performing at least one requirement marked as essential for their occupation in the Occupational Requirement Survey. 

The results show that the most common difficulties in required abilities that result in health mismatch are lifting 25 lbs., standing for one hour, or hearing well in a conversational setting. Furthermore, occupations with a high Index have lower earnings, are more exposed to hazardous environments, and place less emphasis on high performance and problem-solving. Jobs with higher rates of workers who experience at least one difficulty with a job requirement have a higher share of workers receiving SSDI benefits within a 16-month period. Although the share of the population receiving SSDI increased from 1997 to 2010, the Index fell from 7.4 to 6.1 percent, suggesting that the increase could have been higher if not for the decline in health mismatch.

     Note that it says the jobs with higher disability rates "place less emphasis on high performance and problem-solving." Another way of putting that would be "low skill" jobs. Why do people take low paying, low skill jobs? Because that's all they're suited to do. To give a dated reference, we don't live in Lake Woebegone. Not all the children are above average. Some are below average. Those are the ones who take the low paying, low skill jobs because that's all they're cut out to do. These jobs usually have higher physical demands that are more difficult for these workers to meet as they get older.

What's Going On At The Appeals Council With The Lucia Cases?

     I posted on April 8 about the first Appeals Council remand that I had heard of referring to Lucia v. SEC, the Supreme Court case that held that Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who had not been appointed by an agency head were unconstitutionally appointed. That remand wasn't for a claimant represented by my firm. Since that time I've seen a redacted copy of the Appeals Council order in that case. It looked like a case that was going to be remanded anyway. I have heard of no other Lucia remands at Social Security. I have heard of no cases where the Appeals Council tried to rewrite an ALJ decision to somehow skirt Lucia. Also, I have seen no changes to the HALLEX manual that is used to disseminate new policies and procedures at the Appeals Council.

     After Social Security issued Social Security Ruling 19-1p on Lucia, I assumed that the agency knew what it wanted to do. I'm beginning to think that they still don't know what they want to do although that makes me wonder how the Ruling got issued. 

     More and more Social Security seems like an agency adrift with an Acting Commissioner who feels she lacks the authority to lead even on something like this where there's really only one course of action that's even doable -- remanding all the cases where a Lucia objection was made. There's not enough staff at the Appeals Council to rewrite all those decision, not to mention that doing so probably wouldn't pass muster in the federal courts. How is this a tough decision?

A Massive Change In Disability Trust Fund Projection

     From a Social Security press release (emphasis added):

The Social Security Board of Trustees today released its annual report on the long-term financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds. The combined asset reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASI and DI) Trust Funds are projected to become depleted in 2035, one year later than projected last year, with 80 percent of benefits payable at that time.

The OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted in 2034, the same as last year’s estimate, with 77 percent of benefits payable at that time. The DI Trust Fund is estimated to become depleted in 2052, extended 20 years from last year’s estimate of 2032, with 91 percent of benefits still payable. ...

View the 2019 Trustees Report at www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/2019/.

     The change in the estimate for the Disability Trust Fund must be the most massive correction every made by the Chief Actuary in Social Security's long history. That correction tells me that the Disability Trust Fund projection is nearly meaningless. The Chief Actuary doesn't know what's going on. Nobody does.
     By the way, back when the Disability Trust Fund balance was going down, I kept saying that it was coming closer and closer to being in balance, that it might survive even without a legislative fix. We had a legislative fix to temporarily shunt more money into the Disability Trust Fund but I still wonder whether that was necessary. Would the Disability Trust Fund have ever run out of money if nothing had been done?

BOND Experiment A Complete Failure

     While looking for something else, I happened upon a report on the BOND experiment. It was issued last October but Social Security made no effort to publicize it. Here's an excerpt explaining what BOND is or was and what the results have been:

Congress directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to test alternative Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) work rules designed to increase the incentive for SSDI beneficiaries to work and reduce the total amount of SSDI benefits paid to beneficiaries. In response, SSA has undertaken the Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND), a random assignment test of alternative SSDI program rules governing work and other supports. BOND tests a $1 for $2 benefit offset applied to annual earnings above the BOND Yearly Amount (BYA)—the annual equivalent of SSDI’s substantial gainful activity amount. As a result, beneficiaries in the treatment group are able to retain some of their monthly cash benefits while earning more than BYA. The benefit offset reduces yearly SSDI benefits by $1 in SSDI benefits for every $2 in annual earnings above BYA (in other words, reduces yearly SSDI benefits by half the amount that annual earnings exceed the BYA threshold). ...

The analysis finds no confirmatory evidence of an impact of the benefit offset on average earnings in either the nationally-representative Stage 1 or in the Stage 2 sample of volunteers. In contrast, the analysis finds confirmatory evidence that, relative to current law, the benefit offset policy increased the average amount of SSDI benefits due to beneficiaries over five years. In the nationally-representative Stage 1, the positive impact on SSDI benefits was $143 per year (or about $12 per month)—an increase of slightly more than 1 percent of the current-law average benefits. ... 

For the nationally representative Stage 1 sample, the benefit-cost analysis found a net social cost of the BOND offset. The very small estimated increases in earnings were not sufficient to offset the deadweight loss from increases in taxes needed to fund larger SSDI benefit payments. Distributional effects were much larger, with SSDI beneficiaries gaining income by receiving larger SSDI benefits and countervailing losses to the Disability Insurance Trust Fund. ...

     In case the verbiage confuses you, the result is clear.  BOND costs more than it saves. Social Security paid out more in benefits without inducing additional claimants to return to work or at least not enough of them to outweigh the additional benefits. BOND, just like all other efforts to induce Social Security disability recipients to return to work, is a failure. I think I understand why Social Security wasn't trumpeting this report.

     I think it's past time to consider the possibilities that Social Security disability recipients:

• Are generally quite sick
• Are generally getting sicker as they age -- very few ever improve
• Have little potential to return to work

Happy Easter