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May 29, 2023
May 28, 2023
NADE Newsletter
The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of the personnel who make initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Spring 2023 newsletter. There’s information about a couple of meetings they’ve had with agency officials.
May 27, 2023
Good Luck Getting Anyone At Social Security To Answer The Phone Much Less Help You
Elon Musk’s Social Security number was found among Tesla papers made public by a whistleblower.
May 26, 2023
Unhappy ALJs
Some of Social Security’s Administrative Law Judges really don’t like that Washington Post piece on all the federal court remands of their decisions. Take a look at what they have to say.
May 25, 2023
Social Security Faring Poorly In Federal Court
Lisa Rein at the Washington Post has written an article on how frequently Social Security loses when denied disability claimants appeal their cases to federal court. Here are a few snippets:
- In the last two fiscal years, federal judges considering appeals for denied benefits found fault with almost 6 in every 10 cases and sent them back to administrative law judges at Social Security for new hearings — the highest rate of rejections in years, agency statistics show. ... The scathing opinions have come from district and appellate court judges across the political spectrum, from conservatives appointed by President Ronald Reagan to liberal appointees of President Barack Obama.
- The high rate of rejections for cases handled by administrative law judges and the attorneys who write their decisions is driven by stringent monthly quotas set by Social Security officials and growing pressure to deny more cases, according to current and former officials, audits and attorneys who represent the disabled. The agency’s policies have been reshaped to give less deference to the expertise of doctors who, in some cases, have treated claimants for years, and its policies routinely depart from federal appellate court rulings. ... Social Security has stacked the cards against the approximately 2 million people each year who apply for help when they can no longer work.
- Social Security has also tilted the scales in recent years away from key medical evidence, critics say, in another sign of the shift toward granting fewer claims. While administrative law judges once based much of their decision on evidence from primary care doctors or psychiatrists who best understood their patients’ medical issues, that policy changed in 2017. Now judges are free to disregard the opinions of these treating physicians and rely heavily instead on contracted doctors who examine claimants for as little as 15 minute.
- Less weight is given to certain musculoskeletal conditions, for example. IQ tests that show mental impairments do not automatically grant benefits.
May 24, 2023
Numbers Please
The common wisdom is that claimants receive the same decision whether their hearing is in person, over the telephone and by video but do we really know? We think we know that the rate at which claimants were approved did not decline, at least to a significant extent, when the pandemic began and the switch was made to telephone hearings but do we know this for sure? I don't recall ever seeing any numbers from the Social Security Administration. A 2% difference probably wouldn't be enough to be noticeable without numbers from a database but a 2% change is not insignificant for a claimant. For that matter, numbers from the beginning of the pandemic are not the same as numbers from the current environment in which claimants can choose the method, although maybe "choose" should be in quotes since many law firms and other representing claimants -- and not just national firms -- always advise phone or video, mainly because it's more convenient for them. I doubt that the differences between phone, video and in person are great but we ought to get the numbers.
I have to say, though, that there will be confounding elements to the numbers, if we ever see them. In person is now the default mode. That's where a claimant ends up if he or she doesn't make a choice but unresponsive claimants certainly get denied at a higher rate than claimants who choose a method for their hearing. Also, the selection of video is one generally made by better educated claimants. Their chances of success may be different than for less well educated claimants who can only do telephone hearings. Yes, many, perhaps most, Social Security disability claimants lack the technical skills to download an app, register with the app and then access the app when the time comes for their hearing. There's also the problem that those who live in small towns and rural areas are more likely to select telephone or video since they have to travel farther for an person hearing than those who live in urban areas. Rural and urban claimants don't necessarily get approved at the same rate. Rural claimants, on average, have lower educational levels and less access to health care than their urban cousins.
May 23, 2023
These Numbers Are Alarming
From CBS News:
... There are approximately 10.1 million Black children nationwide, and Census data reveals an alarming 9.6% of them, or about 975,000, had lost at least one parent as of 2021. That figure has doubled in the past decade, with a sharp increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One study found that Black children lost caregivers at twice the rate of White children from April 2020 until the end of 2022.
Recent Social Security data shows that only about 26% of Black children who have lost a parent — 257,533 — are receiving survivor benefits, according to the analysis by David Weaver, a former Social Security Administration executive and researcher. The comparable percentage for non-Black children is 46%. Roughly 30,000 fewer Black children are receiving survivor benefits than in 2009, the last time the data was broken down by race. ...
For those who are eligible, a lack of awareness that Social Security offers payments for family survivors — and not only retirees — is often cited as the primary impediment to connecting children with the benefits they're owed. The surviving parent or caregiver is responsible for claiming the benefits on the child's behalf, and many are unaware that the benefit exists. ...
Social Security generally knows when someone dies. Couldn't they send out a notice addressed to the survivors of the decedent at the decedent's old address notifying them that survivor benefits may be available? How difficult is that?
By the way, the numbers for white kids is itself alarming. The numbers for African-American kids is way beyond alarming.
Also, this is further proof that when it comes to Social Security, most people know almost nothing and half of what they think they know is wrong.
May 22, 2023
Nothing Has Happened?
This appeared in the Washington Post a year ago yesterday:
… 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. …
Update: This post has received multiple confused comments blaming the Acting Commissioner for not firing the Inspector General. I have mostly deleted those misleading comments. The Inspector General doesn't work for the Acting Commissioner. The Inspector General was confirmed by the Senate for a five year term. She can only be fired by the President, for cause. Blame the President but assign even more blame to the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency which has been investigating Social Security's Inspector General.