A Little Help In Houston

     From KRPC in Houston:

The Social Security Administration announced Wednesday it was taking steps to mitigate wait times at Houston area offices.

KPRC 2 News viewers have reported standing outside in long lines in the extreme heat for hours at SSA offices in Conroe, Houston, and Pasadena.

In response to inquiries from KPRC 2 News Wednesday, the agency said it was adding a canopy to the northwest Houston office at 16200 Dillard Drive but was exploring the “feasibility” of doing so at other offices.

A spokesperson said the SSA will also temporarily assign additional employees to help triage the lines. They pointed to drop boxes at all Houston offices for people to use if they simply need to drop off documents and evidence. Restrooms and water fountains are also available inside for people waiting in line. ...

Some States Have It Worse Than Others

    From CNBC (go to the link for some nice graphics and lists of all the states):

Many people who have turned to Social Security for help in recent years have found long waits for service.

The pandemic made those delays worse. But the issue actually dates back to before the onset of Covid-19.

Congress has cut Social Security’s core operating budget by 17% since 2010, after adjusting for inflation, according to recent research from the Center on Budget on Policy Priorities. ...

Some states have been more affected by those budget cuts than others, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found.

Social Security’s staff was reduced by 15% between 2010 and 2021. Ten states lost more than 20% of their Social Security staff since 2010. They include Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Four states — Alaska, Iowa, Virginia and West Virginia — lost more than 25%. The same goes for Puerto Rico. ...

The agency’s Disability Determination Service employees, who decide whether people qualify for either disability or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, shrank by 16% between 2010 and 2021. Eight states lost more than 30% of their DDS staff, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The states most affected are Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. ...

    Note how many of the worst affected states vote reliably for Republicans who are the ones responsible for the budget problems and thus for the staffing cuts.

OHO Stats

     Posted by Social Security. Click on image to view full size.

You Knew The Stories Were Coming -- Waiting In High Heat Outside SSA Office -- Note That The Reporter Doesn't Quite Get That The Lines Are A National Problem

 

Why Not Look At Both Sides?

     From Incorrect Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance Benefit Payment Computations that Resulted in Overpayments, an audit report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... SSA makes incorrect benefit computations when employees enter the wrong information into SSA’s systems or incorrectly calculate benefits. Benefits are incorrectly computed when employees or systems base calculations on inaccurate information. When SSA detects an error or obtains accurate information, it corrects the benefits and establishes an overpayment or issues an underpayment. We focused our review on overpayments. ...

We estimate SSA could have avoided approximately 73,000 overpayments totaling more than $368 million if it had effective controls over benefit-computation accuracy. SSA’s controls did not always ensure the Agency calculated benefits accurately. ...

    OK, those overpayments aren't good but what about the other side of the coin. Wasn't Social Security as likely to underpay claimants as overpay them? How many claimants were underpaid and by how much? Isn't that as least as important?

    This report is a microcosm of OIG's priorities and not just under the current Inspector General -- an intense focus on overpayments with only a limited interest in underpayments, which are at least as big a problem.

Markup Of House Appropriations Bill For Social Security

    The Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that has jurisdiction over legislation to fund the administrative operations of the Social Security Administration will markup their share of the FY 2023 appropriations at 5:30 on June 23.

    This may not matter much. Sixty votes are needed to break a filibuster in the Senate. This means that Senate Republicans can, and almost certainly will, prevent passage of a bill until after this November's elections. If things go as now expected, Republicans will control at least the House of Representatives beginning next January. Also, both Republicans and Democrats would each continue to have an effective veto over appropriations in the Senate. The President would continue to have a real veto as well. In other words, this markup session would be very, very important if there were no filibuster in the Senate but there is a filibuster so this markup may have little value other than giving some idea of the priorities that Democrats have. We have some suggestion that Social Security isn't regarded as a priority. The Appropriations Committees have been busy holding hearing concerning appropriations for various agencies including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Park Service, etc. but no appropriations hearing in either the House or Senate on Social Security.

    By the way, to give you an idea of the process for this markup, the Chair of the Subcommittee, Rosa DeLauro (who is also the Chair of the full Committee), will come up with what is known at the "Chairman's Mark" -- her proposal for what the Subcommittee should do. Members of the Subcommittee can then vote on proposals to modify the Chairman's Mark. The Chairman's Mark isn't released to the public until a few hours before the markup session.

$90,000 Backpay For Widower

      From Business Insider Personal Finance:

Anthony Gonzales and Mark Johnson were married at the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, alongside more than 100 other LGBTQ+ couples, on August 27, 2013. 

Same-sex marriage was legalized statewide in New Mexico in December 2013 — and was legalized nationwide on June 26, 2015 by the Supreme Court — however, some local county clerks in New Mexico began issuing marriage licenses to LGBTQ+ couples as early as August 2013, arguing that New Mexico's definition of marriage made no mention of sex or gender. … 

Johnson died on February 19, 2014, six months after he legally married Gonzales at the county clerk's office. … 

When he turned 60 in 2015, one year after Mark's death, Gonzales was let go from his job. He applied for survivor benefits, Social Security benefits that widows and widowers get when their spouse dies. … 

Gonzales was denied survivor benefits three weeks after he sent his application. He says, "I got a letter saying, 'Sorry, but you weren't married the required nine months.' And I was like, 'Well, how could we fulfill that requirement when we could not get married?" … 

In May 2021, the US District Court of Arizona ruled in favor of … same-sex couples who had been denied survivor benefits. According to records reviewed by Insider, Gonzales started receiving $1,700 a month in survivor benefits starting May 2021, along with $90,000 in backpay for the years he was denied benefits. …

Big Jump In DDS Processing Time

    This is the processing time at the Disability Determination Services. I don't think the report specifies but this looks like the initial level processing time.

From Medical Evidence Collection In Adult Social Security Disability Claims, a report to the Social Security Advisory Board