PRW To Go Down From 15 Years To 5 On June 8

     From a notice that Social Security will publish in the Federal Register tomorrow:

We are finalizing our proposed regulation to revise the time period that we consider when determining whether an individual’s past work is relevant for the purposes of making disability determinations and decisions. We are revising the definition of past relevant work (PRW) by reducing the relevant work period from 15 to 5 years. Additionally, we will not consider past work that started and stopped in fewer than 30 calendar days to be PRW. ...

DATES: This final rule will be effective on June 8, 2024.

Perfect Timing?

    Wouldn't now be the time to end the reconsideration step in Social Security disability determination? Over the years the objection to doing that has been that that it would throw too many cases to the hearing level but at the moment the backlogs are enormous at the initial and reconsideration steps and quite low at OHO. Doing it now would kill two birds with one stone. You'd dramatically reduce the backlogs at DDS and you'd give OHO something to do at a time when they're rapidly running out of work. It would create the "drinking from a fire hose" problem at OHO but I'd rather see that than have OHO lacking work while DDS struggles. 

    By the way, I have a vested interest in seeing this come to pass since I have a vested interest in seeing Social Security disability claims resolved expeditiously. Is that a bad thing?

 

Help For SSI Recipients

    The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final rules to add Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP or Food Stamps) to the definition of means-tested assistance programs for the purposes of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) computation. This will help reduce Social Security workloads and it will increase benefits for many SSI recipients. Expect to see this in the Federal Register soon.

SSNs To Disappear From Government Correspondence

      From Government Executive: 

 Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule Friday that would cull Social Security numbers any mailed document in an effort to prevent fraud.

The rule, which was published in the Federal Register, is part of the implementation of the 2017 Social Security Number Fraud Prevention Act and is designed to help protect the identifiers, which can be used in various forms of identity theft.  …

O'Malley Trashed

     Mark Warshawsky, of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, has written an op ed for the Baltimore Sun trashing Social Security's Commissioner, Martin O'Malley. Warshawsky blames O'Malley for asking for greater operating funds for Social Security. He says that the increasing number of people drawing Social Security benefits is large irrelevant to the agency's workload since it is mostly retirees who put little burden on the system. He says that the agency's real problem with getting its workload done is employees working from home and Social Security adding a new step in the process of disability review in 2019 and 2020. I don't know what new step he's talking about here. Of course, there's also the problem that in 2019 and 2020 O'Malley wasn't the Commissioner and Biden wasn't the President. Warshawsky goes on criticize what O'Malley is doing about overpayments and O'Malley's failure to adopt new regulations drafted while Republicans were in office to deny far more disability claimants. By the way, Republicans could have adopted those regulations but were no more eager than O'Malley to do so and for good reason. They're not justified by the data not to mention that all hell would break loose if they were adopted.

    By the way, not to knock the Baltimore Sun, which is a fine newspaper, but I'm betting that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal passed on this piece before the Sun finally agreed to publish it.

Backlog Improvement At OHO

    Dispositions continue to outpace receipts at Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), i.e.,  it's taking less time to get a hearing on a disability claim. The biggest reason is that cases are hung up at lower levels of review where backlogs are burgeoning. One day that dam will burst and OHO will be inundated.

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New ISM Rules

     The Social Security Administration will be publishing final rules tomorrow which provide:

... that a “business arrangement” exists, such that the SSI applicant or recipient is not considered to be receiving ISM [In Kind Support and Maintenance] in the form of room or rent, when the amount of monthly required rent for the property equals or exceeds the presumed maximum value (PMV).

    This sounds awfully tedious, and it is, but the estimate of Social Security's Chief Actuary is that it will increase SSI payments to about 41,000 people by an average of $132 a month.

    The new regulations will not go into effect until September 30, 2024.

    Unfortunately, there is nothing in these new regulations to help those who have an agreement to pay for their room and board once they get some income, that is, a loan of room and board. There are a lot of people in this situation and Social Security is treating them harshly.

Past Relevant Work Regs Advance

     The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved final regulations on Intermediate Improvement to the Disability Adjudication Process, Including How we Consider Past Work. When published as a proposal these included a reduction in the time period for considering past relevant work from 15 years to 5. Expect to see the regulations in the Federal Register soon. 

    I hope the effective date isn't six months into the future.