What A Disaster!

     From Promoting Opportunity Demonstration: Final Evaluation Report, submitted to Social Security by Mathematica, a contractor:

...  POD [Promoting Opportunity Demonstration] was a randomized controlled trial that included two treatments of a benefit offset. The two treatment groups had the same benefit offset but different termination rules. Treatment group 1 (T1) did not face termination, but treatment group 2 (T2) faced termination after 12 consecutive months of earnings above the full offset amount (the point at which benefits were reduced to zero). ...

The key features of POD implementation included benefits counseling services and support for processing earnings adjustments, led by the implementation team, and recruitment, led by the evaluation team. ...

Approximately 30 percent of treatment group members used the POD benefit offset, with a median monthly offset amount of $351. More than 80 percent of offset users experienced a work-related overpayment or underpayment, requiring a retroactive adjustment to reconcile the difference. ...

We did not observe any statistically significant differences in outcomes between the two treatment groups for overall offset usage or the impact estimates for the primary outcomes. ...

There were limited statistically significant differences in observed outcomes for the POD treatment and control groups. There were impacts on one primary outcome (annualized SGA) and several other employment-related measures. For example, we found positive impacts on job search and use of Vocational Rehabilitation services, which might contribute to longer-term outcomes. These impacts were notable because they indicate that impacts could still emerge beyond the two-year evaluation window. ...

POD had positive net benefits for beneficiaries and net costs to SSA. The net benefits for beneficiaries were driven by increases in earnings and fringe benefits, and SSDI benefit amounts. The new costs were driven primarily by the increased benefit payments and costs for counseling services. ...

    Even with counseling, 80% of those using the offset ended up with an overpayment or underpayment! The experiment had only a limited effect on outcomes and ended up costing more money than it saved! Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

    Why can't policymakers admit the obvious? Social Security disability recipients are, for the most part, really, really sick. Everything under the sun has been tried to get them back to jobs. Nothing has worked. Nothing. The work incentive schemes just get more difficult and expensive to administer. They end up with messy results for the disability recipients who do attempt to return to work because the offsets are too complicated The schemes always end up costing more money than they save. There's no possible work incentives that will get any significant number of disability recipients back to work because they're too sick. 

    Crappy experiments like this are likely to go on forever because policymakers are blinded by their own preconceptions that it's easy to get on Social Security disability benefits and that a lot of disability recipients could work if given the right incentives. They don't bother to study the pathetic history of work incentive failure. They get sold on new schemes by contractors like Mathematica who end up getting paid even though their schemes never work. Even after this disaster this 406 page report ends with ideas for new schemes that could be tried!

“Serious Concerns” About IG

      From the Washington Post:

… The acting commissioner [of Social Security] “has very serious concerns about the issues raised by The Washington Post about the inspector general’s oversight of this program,” Scott Frey, chief of staff to Kilolo Kijakazi, said in an interview. Kijakazi has scheduled a meeting with her senior staff on Monday “to discuss how to proceed,” Frey said. …

A spokesman for the Senate Finance Committee, which also has jurisdiction over Social Security, said the committee is “evaluating a number of steps” in response to the article. …

     An extreme reduction in productivity has been signaling for months that something is wrong at OIG. 

More On House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

    From the U.S. Sun, which is affiliated with a major British newspaper:

... [The Social Security Administration]  has encountered some issues keeping up with the volume of beneficiaries.

One of the major ways that problem manifests is in a lack of customer service.

Getting through to the SSA over the phone is difficult, and callers experience long wait times before getting any help. ...

On May 19, Congress held a hearing to see how it could help alleviate the administration's issue.

“In my home district in Oklahoma, seniors are completely unable to reach the Social Security Administration by phone,” Representative Kevin Hern (R-OK) said at the hearing.

“As a result, my elderly constituents end up calling my staff after many failed attempts to call the office at the Social Security Administration,” he said. ...

    I'd love to see some reporting on this from the NY Times and Washington Post.

Harsh Penalties For Overpaid Claimants Lead To Tumult At OIG

From the Washington Post:

Four years after her longtime partner died of kidney cancer, federal agents knocked on Gail Deckman’s door outside Chicago and told her she was in trouble: She had kept thousands of dollars in Social Security disability benefits that should have stopped when he died.

Deckman told the agents she thought the $1,400 check deposited each month into an account to which she had access was a payment for land her partner had sold in Michigan. She spent the money on rent and clothes and gifts for her grandchildren, she said.

The inspector general’s office, which investigates disability fraud and tries to recoup money for the government, ultimately charged her $119,392 — nearly three times what she received in error.

Deckman didn’t have the money. So the Social Security Administration garnished the entire $704 check she was going to receive every month when she retired from her minimum-wage job flipping burgers at the convenience store in her local Rebel gas station. She can apply for retirement in 2032 — when she’s 83. ...

The inflated fees were set in motion during the Trump administration, when attorneys in charge of a little-known anti-fraud program run by the inspector general’s office levied unprecedented fines against Deckman and more than 100 other beneficiaries without due process, according to interviews, documents and sworn testimony before an administrative law judge. In doing so, they disregarded regulations and deviated from how the program had recovered money since its inception in 1995, failing to take into account someone’s financial state, their age, their intentions and level of remorse, among other factors. ...

The escalating penalties created a giant jump — at least on paper — in the amount of money the inspector general could show lawmakers it was bringing in, according to interviews and sworn testimony obtained by The Washington Post. Fines as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars were imposed on poor, disabled and elderly people, many of whom had no hope of ever being able to pay.

A Chicago woman was fined $132,000 after wrongly receiving as much as $10,618 in benefits, according to internal data of penalties and assessments obtained by The Post. A Denver woman was sanctioned $168,000 after cashing as much as $14,960 in wrongly received checks. A New Jersey woman is on the hook for nearly $435,000 after she accepted about $47,000 in benefits but failed to report a $120,000 house she inherited from her father and car loans she co-signed for her children, on what she said was a lawyer’s advice. ...

The remarkable penalties led to tumult inside the Office of Inspector General Gail Ennis, where a whistleblower was targeted for retaliation, according to a ruling this month by the administrative judge at the Merit Systems Protection Board. ...

     The Chairmen of the Social Security Subcommittee and the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee  (which has jurisdiction over SSI) are calling for an investigation. There’s actually a process for investigating IGs.

Trying To Cram Telephone/Video Hearings Down The Throats Of Claimants?

     Yesterday I received word through the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) that the number of hearings Social Security has scheduled for July and August is down more than 30%. We are told that they will try to schedule more hearings if we'll agree to hearings being held without receiving the notice period required by the agency's regulations and agree that the hearings be held either by telephone or video. 

    I've got three questions:

• Why has the agency scheduled so many fewer hearings this summer? It's not like they're run out of cases to schedule.
• If the problem were merely scheduling, why is it necessary to put pressure on claimants to accept telephone and video hearings? If you're doing in person hearings, you're doing in person hearings.
  
• Will there be a continuing effort to cram telephone and video hearings down the throats of destitute claimants by scheduling those hearings far more quickly?
  

Backlogs Go Up When Overtime Goes Down, As It Must When SSA Is Underfunded

     From the written testimony of Grace Kim, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

Click on image to view full size

 

PC = Payment Center, where Title II disability benefits for older claimants are computed

OCO = Office of Central Operations, where Title II disability benefits for younger claimants are computed

EOY = End Of Year

A Report On Tuesday's Hearing

  There's a report on the CNBC website on Tuesday's House Social Security Subcommittee hearing. I don't see anything indicating that this appears anywhere other than online. There's no video that I see.

    Social Security's problems are receiving only limited media attention.

NCSSMA Says Field Office Employees Need To Be In The Office -- And What's This About SSA Being Unable To Accept E-Signatures?

     From the written testimony of Peggy Murphy for the National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

... Field offices can be more responsive to the public only when employees are onsite. The current telework program in field offices makes it difficult to adjust to surges in office visitors or telephone calls while balancing appointments, scheduled and unscheduled employee leave, and back-end work. This is further complicated by having an appreciable number of field office employees continuing to work from home full-time due to personal circumstances. SSA has the technology and flexibility to consider transferring field office employees, who are unable to work in the office, to other components that can better accommodate their telework needs and limit the impact on front-line public service. We need employees in field offices who are able to work onsite and assist those who seek our help in person and to handle the multitude of workloads that are not portable. As an agency we need to be able to maintain our flexibility in the field offices so we can respond to surges from the public.

    By the way, Murphy's written testimony says that Social Security ought to accept electronic signatures. Per a White House order, they must! Social Security is mentioned by name in that order. Grace Kim, Social Security's  Deputy Commissioner for Operations, also testified that the agency couldn't yet accept electronic signatures. I don't understand this.