May God Protect Ukraine In The New Year

 

From Ukraine

Washington Post On SSA’s Failure To Adopt New Occupational Information System

      The Washington Post has a new editorial out criticizing Social Security for failing to use the new occupational information system that has been under development for more than a decade. 

     The Post falls for the right wing argument that use of the new OIS will result in more people being denied Social Security disability benefits. The new OIS will show what sophisticated observers already know. The cognitive demands of employment have gone up significantly. This has significantly decreased the availability of unskilled work. Those unskilled sedentary jobs are gone as are many of the light ones. Without major, and quite hostile, revisions to disability determination regulations, this results in far more disability claims being approved.

Senate To Investigate Ennis And OIG

Ennis

     Lisa Rein writes for the Washington Post that the Senate Finance Committee is preparing a bipartisan investigation of Social Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and its head,  Gail Ennis. OIG has been in the news because of allegations of overly harsh punitive actions against some claimants and of retaliation against whistleblowers.

     I’d call Ennis a fool for hanging around for this. What was already out made it clear she was in major trouble. This sort of Congressional investigation was inevitable. It’s not going to be pretty. 

     By the way, are there any criminal statutes implicated here? It would be a little awkward for an Inspector General to take the 5th.

How Do You Represent Claimants In Conditions Like This?

     A note in our database concerning one client who recently filed a claim:

 FO [Field Office] has our paperwork and has had it since 10/4/22. The claims rep, Ms. ____ at x ____, has not put our paperwork so that DDS [Disability Determination Service] will give us status. When calling the FO, another claims rep will not step in and assist. I did get the claims rep I spoke with, Mr. ____, to send Ms. ____ an email that we were calling about the paperwork on these two cases.

As the claim's rep I spoke with was sending Ms. ____ an email, I followed up with a fax prompting her attention to the representative paperwork on this case so we can get DDS access.

    To explain, the claimant filed a claim. We submitted paperwork showing I'm representing the client. Field office personnel aren't entering the data in their system showing that I'm representing the client so we're flying blind. We can't get information about what's going on with the case. We can't submit any information. In the unlikely event that there's a quick decision in the case, we won't know unless the client tells us and we can't count on that.  Why is Ms. ____ not entering the information in their system? There could be other factors at work but the main reason is that she's overworked. Everything is backlogged. The public suffers in many ways.

    This isn't an isolated case. This happens a lot. In fact, the hopeful thing about this case is that the legal assistant involved was actually able to speak to someone at the FO. Often, we struggle to get anyone at the FO to answer the phone.

The Clock Is Ticking

     Today's SSI story concerns a claimant who was approved for both SSI disability benefits and Disability Insurance Benefits on June 17. Her monthly checks have started but he's yet to receive any back benefits. The holdup is called the windfall offset, which was designed to pay the claimant SSI benefits as if the Disability Insurance Benefits had been paid when they were due. The windfall offset in practice is bizarrely convoluted. But, still, it's been more than six months. Why haven't they done the windfall offset? We can't get an answer but we know that the underlying problem is understaffing at the field office.

Why Does SSA Keep Using The DOT?

      Lisa Rein at the Washington Post has a long piece out on Social Security’s use of the horribly outdated Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) in making disability determinations. Everyone involved knows the DOT is completely unreliable. 

     Social Security has been working on a replacement for the DOT for decades. Supposedly it’s ready but they aren’t using it. Why? The only thing I can surmise is that a new occupational information system will end up affecting who gets approved and who gets denied and that’s unacceptable to Social Security. They want something “new” that’s exactly the same as the outdated data they’ve been using since 1979.

Happy Day After Christmas

 

Merry Christmas