Expect A Lower COLA This Year

     By the Motley Fool's calculations, if things stay on their current course, Social Security's Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for this year will be about 1.4%, which is half of last year's 2.8% increase.

Social Security Records Get Prisoner Off Death Row

     From the Washington Times:

Bruce Webster has been on death row for 23 years. Last month he got a stunning reprieve.

A federal judge ruled that new evidence had come to light suggesting Webster has a mental disability, making him ineligible for execution. It’s the first time someone has been saved from the death penalty by a post-conviction diagnosis of mental infirmity from newly discovered evidence, his lawyers say. ...

At the original trial in 1996, Webster’s attorneys argued their client was mentally challenged, but the government had its own expert witnesses who claimed the defendant was faking his disabilities to escape liability. ...

His lawyers at the time had tried to find government records to back up their disability claim, but failed. More than a decade later, his appellate lawyers were able to get Social Security records showing Webster had applied for disability benefits a year before the murder, and had been deemed disabled because of a low IQ and psychological deficiencies. ...

fter looking back over Webster’s evaluations from the Social Security records, Judge Lawrence ruled executing him would run afoul of the Constitution under a 2002 ruling from the Supreme Court, which held the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment prevents putting persons with mental disabilities to death.

In that dispute, Atkins v. Virginia, the defendant had IQ scores around 59. Webster’s scores ranged from 48 to 77.

“The scores themselves were obtained over a period of 25 years and consistently demonstrate that Webster has an IQ that falls within the range of someone with intellectual deficits,” Judge Lawrence ruled. ...

Pressure On New Commissioner On Labor Unions

     A number of important Congressional leaders, all Democrats, including the ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and the Chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and House Oversight and Reform Committee, have written Andrew Saul, the new Commissioner of Social Security, to urge that he reject anti-employee union actions which took place before he was sworn in and to return to the bargaining table.

     I don't know exactly what's going to happen but if Saul doesn't change the course of the labor-management relationship at Social Security he's going to face massive conflict with Congressional Democrats and they are in a position to make his life difficult. There should be a House Social Security Subcommittee hearing with Saul in the near future. It will go a lot easier for Saul if the main employee union at Social Security, AFGE, believes that Saul wants to work with them instead of trying to destroy them.

Inconsistent Handling Of Veterans' Disability Claims

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

SSA [Social Security Administration] policy provides for disability claims filed by current and former military service members to be expedited. SSA identifies these claims as Military Casualty/Wounded Warrior (MC/WW) and Veteran 100 Percent Permanent and Total (VAPT) disability claims. ... VAPT classifications do not guarantee an allowance for SSA disability benefits. VAPT recipients must meet SSA’s disability medical eligibility and entitlement requirements. ... 

SSA does not define “expeditious” for processing MC/WW and VAPT claims, have processing time goals, or perform regular analysis of the MC/WW and VAPT claims to identify trends. Therefore, to assess the MC/WW and VAPT processing times, we compared them to the average processing time for all disability claims at the various stages of review nationally and by State. We found the following.

• At the initial claims level, SSA processed MC/WW and VAPT claims only 1 day faster than it processed all disability claims.

• SSA processed MC/WW and VAPT claims from 37 to 315 days more quickly than all disability claims at the reconsideration, hearing office, and Appeals Council levels.

• Average processing times varied across States.

There were processing delays attributable to SSA as well as delays outside SSA’s control.

Finally, SSA designed and implemented internal controls to identify and flag MC/WW and VAPT claims to prioritize the processing of those claims. However, SSA could not provide us evidence that it followed its policies and procedures to ensure staff and management properly tracked or monitored MC/WW and VAPT claims.

     By the way, I've seen the same sort of thing with other categories where Social Security is supposed to speed review, such as homeless claimants. A "critical case" designation seems to mean nothing at the initial and reconsideration levels but usually a lot at the hearing or Appeals Council levels.

Social Security Disability And The Homeless Population

     From Investigating Inequities In Accessing Social Security Disability Insurance And Supplemental Security Income For Adults Experiencing Homelessness, an M.S. thesis presented by Anna Booras at Boston University:

... The primary objective of this research study was to investigate applicant and application characteristics associated with disability outcomes among patients at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) Barbara McInnis House (BMH) Medical Respite Unit and to explore the effect of advocacy in increasing access to benefits for those who qualify. ... 

It was shown that advocacy and assistance with the application process for SSI and SSDI produced an allowance rate for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness considered in this study that was almost twice the allowance rate for the homeless population in the state of Massachusetts and was significantly higher than the state general population. Despite the increase in allowance rate, the application determination times were significantly longer for the population of interest in this study as compared to the general population. ... Medical advocacy letters were found to aid in access to benefits for those with mental health primary diagnoses. ... 

In general, consultative examinations were associated with extremely lower odds of approval with only a 16.67% allowance rate overall. ...

     Programs such as Ms. Booras was investigating are great but there's not enough of them to make a dent nationally in the disabled homeless population. Private representation is critical for this population. For a long time, I've been telling colleagues who practice Social Security law that homeless clients may present some challenges but that you can win their cases and make money by helping them. This study is proof of what I have seen in my practice. My name and telephone number gets passed around at the South Wilmington Street Homeless Shelter in Raleigh, the biggest one locally. I'm happy to have the business. If you practice Social Security law, don't shy away from homeless clients.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), a voluntary organization of the personnel who make disability determinations for Social Security at the initial and reconsideration levels, has issued its Summer 2019 newsletter. Here's one item from "NADE's Top Issues for 2019":

Reduction in 15 Year Work History: Due to vast changes in the occupational landscape, it is unfair current regulations allow claims to be denied on the basis claimants have an ability to perform a job they performed previously but which no longer exists, or a job they would no longer recognize.

If This Is The Best You've Got ...

     The idea of increasing the federal estate tax and devoting its revenues to the Social Security trust funds must be gaining support since the National Review has an editorial out opposing the idea. They oppose it because that alone won't solve Social Security's long term financing issues. The thing is that in the same piece, the National Review supports increasing full retirement age and reducing the cost of living adjustment. Those proposals, either singly or in combination, don't solve the long term financing issues either.

     They also try arguing that increasing the estate tax punishes successful Americans but that's ridiculous. An estate tax reduces inheritances for the survivors of wealthy Americans, not the wealthy Americans themselves. The wealthy Americans may have been successful or maybe they just inherited wealth themselves but their survivors aren't inheriting money because of their own success.

Hearing Backlog Dwindling

     This is a caseload analysis report from Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO) which was obtained by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in their newsletter (which is not available online to non-members).

Click on image to view full size

     Note that in May the average receipts per Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) per day was 1.39 but the average number of dispositions per ALJ per day was 2.31. It won't take long at that rate for the backlog to disappear. In retrospect, was it a good idea to increase the minimum notice of a hearing from 20 days to 75 days?