When I Say Attorneys Representing Social Security Claimants Are Hurting, I'm Not Kidding

     Social Security has posted final numbers showing total fees paid to attorneys for representing claimants in 2021. Let's do a comparison with the last two years:

• 2019: 390,809 fees were paid for a total of $1,214,557,861. 
  
• 2020: 360,493 fees were paid, down 8% from 2019. The total fees paid were $1,081,523,523, down 11% from 2019.
• 2021: 296,847 fees were paid, down 18% from 2020 and down 24% from 2019. The total fees paid were $932,887,938, down 14% from 2020 and down 23% from 2020.
  

      One big problem is that even though the number of new claims filed has gone down significantly, the number of clients at Social Security law firms hasn't gone down much because cases are so piled up at the initial and reconsideration levels, not to mention the huge backlogs of claimants waiting to be paid after favorable decisions. Our workloads are still there even though our gross receipts have plummeted. There are fewer hearings but more effort expended trying to make sure Social Security does what it is supposed to do. In the current environment many cases get sidetracked for months. Some get lost. Overwhelmed agency employees do little to sort out these problems. Social Security employees may get tired of lawyers repeatedly contacting them about cases but if you're on the receiving end, it's impossible to tell a case that's just in a backlog pile from one that's not even in the pile.

     Contrary to what many Social Security employees may think, representing Social Security claimants is a high overhead, low profit margin business in the best of times. Everybody need normality at Social Security. Social Security attorneys also need and deserve a cost of living adjustment in the maximum attorney fee under the fee agreement process.

ALJs To Start Returning To Their Offices In May

Welcome Back!

      The ALJ Discussion Forum is a message board for Social Security Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and wannabe ALJs. It's independent of the Social Security Administration. Yesterday, reports began to be published on the message board about an e-mail that ALJ union members received telling them of an agreement to allow ALJs to return to their offices on a voluntary basis beginning on May 4 with return required in June. However, ALJs will only be required to come in on days on which they have hearings. The reports on the board indicate that there's still no agreement with the larger AFGE union that includes most non-ALJ personnel at Social Security.

A Question

      I have cases at the Appeals Council whose status is variously given in ERE as Assigned to Adjudicator, Assigned to Analyst and Case Workup. What is the difference? What can I tell from these case statuses? Anything?

Slow Progress In Obtaining And Analyzing Medical Records Via IT

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

Despite spending more than 10 years trying to increase the number of medical records received through health IT, SSA still receives most records in paper or ERE format. In the Fiscal Year (FY) that ended on September 30, 2020, SSA received only 11 percent of medical records through health IT. 

SSA experienced a decreasing trend in adding new health IT partners from 56 in FY 2018 to 12 in FY 2021 (as of August). During this time, SSA reduced the number of staff and contractors involved in health IT outreach and did not fully fund projects to increase electronic medical evidence. Also, expanding the number of health IT records by adding new partners is not a unilateral decision made by SSA, as prospective partners must be willing and able to meet SSA’s technical requirements, and COVID-19 was a factor. In October 2021, SSA informed us it was (a) working on Memorandums of Understanding with 3 entities to exchange health IT records with over 30 large health IT organizations and (b) adding more staff to develop and implement strategies to expand health IT.

Challenges in expanding the number of health IT records include some partners’ inability to send sensitive medical records, acceptance of SSA’s authorization form to release records to the Agency (Form SSA-827), and medical industry-wide differences in patient-identifying data fields. 

Additionally, SSA has had limited success analyzing medical records because MEGAHIT is limited to analyzing only structured data. MEGAHIT generated data extracts on only 7.3 percent of the 1.6 million health IT records SSA received in FY 2020. The extracts assist SSA disability examiners in making accurate disability determinations. Since 2018, SSA has been developing and testing the Intelligent Medical-Language Analysis GENeration application with new capabilities for reviewing medical records. As of August 2021, SSA was still testing and rolling out this application to its offices. ...

Supreme Court Opinion On Obscure Windfall Offset Issue

      From the syllabus of the Supreme Court's opinion in Babcock v. Kijakazi:

This case concerns retirement benefits due under the Social Security Act for a retired “military technician (dual status)" ... Like all dual-status technicians, Babcock was required to maintain membership in the National Guard. ... Upon retirement, Babcock applied to the Social Security Administration for benefits. The agency granted Babcock benefits but applied a statutory “windfall elimination provision” and reduced the amount of benefits to reflect Babcock’s receipt of civil-service pension payments for his work as a technician. ...

Held: Civil-service pension payments based on employment as a dual-status military technician are not payments based on “service as a member of a uniformed service” ...

     In other words, Babcock loses. Social Security will continue to apply the windfall offset to his Social Security benefits.

     While this seems like an obscure question to me, it probably affects at least hundreds of people, maybe thousands. That's the way it is with Social Security. It's so big that even tiny changes affect significant numbers of people.

It's A Bad Month To Be Trying To Do Business With Social Security

     January is usually a tough month for the Social Security Administration. There's a bit of hangover of work that didn't get done during the holidays but, more important, there's an increased workload because of the number of people who retire at the end of a calendar year and because SSA-1099s go out in January and their receipt occasions calls, not to mention those who call because they didn't receive an SSA-1099. All of this is still happening in January 2022 but Social Security faces more service delivery obstacles than usual. We still lack an appropriation for FY 2022 so the agency has little money to spend on overtime and the Omicron variant is causing a lot of employees absenteeism. All of this put together is a perfect storm that is causing horrific problems for anyone trying to do business with Social Security's field offices and teleservice centers. It's also likely to lead to little regular work getting done at the payment centers which get called upon to help the teleservice centers when they can't answer their phones.

Big Decline In Disability Claim Approvals Continues

      Social Security has posted final 2021 numbers on disability claims. Claims filed in 2021 went down slightly from 1,838,893 in 2020 to 1,820,282 in 2021 but there was a sharp 11.75% decline in the number of claims approved from 648,121 in 2020 to 571,952 in 2021. This is on top of a 10.46% decline in claims approved in 2020. Note that claims approved went down far faster than claims filed. The difference is vastly increased backlogs, mostly at the initial and reconsideration levels but also at the payment centers where favorable Title II decisions are implemented. The number of claimants in current payment went down 3.36% in 2021 from 8,151,016 in 2020 to 7,877,129 in 2021.

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Vaccine Mandate Compliance Rate Increases At Social Security While Suspensions Loom For Those Who Fail To Comply

     From The Hill:

Federal government agencies are preparing to take increasingly harsh steps against unvaccinated employees in order to implement President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers.  

Some agencies plan to send letters warning of possible suspensions to employees who have not complied with the mandate. Many are also prepared to fire employees who don’t follow the rule, though such moves would be further down the road. ...

The departments of Treasury, Transportation and Agriculture as well as the General Services Administration, Social Security Administration and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are all expected to begin suspending employees who are not complying with the mandate in the coming weeks. ...

Some agencies also saw success in convincing unvaccinated workers to get the shot toward the end of the year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, as of Friday had achieved a 98.9 percent compliance rate and a 91.5 vaccination rate, compared with a 95 percent compliance rate and 87.7 percent vaccination rate as of November.  ...