I Thought That Job One At The Payment Centers Was To Pay People

     From Reducing Processing Centers’ Pending Actions, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

...  SSA met its annual PC [Payment Center] pending actions performance measure goal in 4 of the 6 FYs [Fiscal Years] between FY 2018 through 2023. SSA reported it did not meet its goals in the remaining 2 FYs because of unexpected staff reductions, increased workloads, and less than expected overtime funding it would have used to pay employees to process more PC pending actions.

Although SSA achieved its PC pending actions performance goals in 4 of the last 6 FYs, there was no overall reduction in PC pending actions over those 6 years. In fact, the PC pending actions backlog increased from 3.2 million in FY 2018 to 4.6 million in FY 2023. As the backlog grows, many PC pending actions remain unresolved for long periods of time. From a sample of 139 pending actions, 102 (73 percent) were pending for 300 days or more, with 60 of the 102 pending for 500 days or more.

Delays in processing PC pending actions can lead to higher improper payments, which increased some beneficiaries’ financial burden as they waited longer for underpayments or were charged with increased overpayment amounts. If SSA resolved the PC pending actions we reviewed at the earliest possible instance, we estimate it would have determined approximately 528,000 beneficiaries were improperly paid approximately $534 million. After the pending actions were not processed for 12 months, the improper payment amount for those same beneficiaries rose to approximately $756 million. By the time of our review, many of the PC pending actions had been pending for longer than 12 months, and the improper payment amount had increased to approximately $1.1 billion.

    Notice that it didn't seem to bother OIG that the payment centers were frequently failing to pay benefits for long periods of time. The only thing they seemed to have been concerned about was an increase in overpayments. This in a nutshell is the OIG outlook on the Social Security world -- It doesn't matter when or if you pay claimants what they're due; the only thing that counts is that you not overpay them. That outlook is a prescription for disaster for claimants.

Little Support For Cutting Social Security

     Poll results from the Pew Research Center:

Happy Independence Day!

 

July 5?

    I haven't heard. Are Social Security field offices open to the public on Friday, July 5?

 

    Update: I posted this over three hours ago and no one has responded! I may not be the only one who doesn't know the answer to this question.

But It's Only Been Six Months! Maybe If We Wait Longer He'll Get Better

    From some television station in Atlanta that likes to hide its call letters:

...  For the Dickens, the unthinkable occurred in January when James had a stroke, his wife Schantalyn told 11Alive. The couple had only recently married in November 2023. 

"You plan on getting married, and after getting married, you plan on a happily ever after," Schantalyn shared. "It was so unexpected. We didn't know that the morning of January 5 at 3 in the morning, James would have a massive stroke."

Since his stroke, James has been recovering in a nursing facility. Meanwhile, Schantalyn continues to check in with eligibility officials to see whether her husband's disability claimed has been reviewed and approved. ...

[T]he time it takes to process cases varies widely. The national average for making an initial disability determination is 187 days, while in Georgia, the determination takes an average of 287 days. South Carolina tops the list for wait times, with 325 days for initial determination. SSA attributes much of the delays to staffing challenges.  ...

This Looks Awful

     From WFTV in Orlando:

Jennifer Groover has received Social Security since she was 6 years old because she has Down Syndrome.

But 38 years later, the Social Security Administration has taken away those benefits, her only income, because they said they had no evidence or documentation right now saying she has the disability.

“We’ve got one letter that she needs to go to work,” Cynthia Groover, her mom, said. “Yeah, they said we’ll help her get a job. She can go to work. She can barely walk. Her legs and feet are so bad. She’s so full of arthritis, and there’s no way she could walk. No, she can’t. She doesn’t have the mentality to hold the job.”

In July of 2023, the family received a letter giving them 10 days to respond.

If not, the SSA said it may have to make a “finding of not disabled because of insufficient evidence.”

Notes from the Groovers said they could not get anyone to answer after they left 16 messages. ...

But on July 15, 2023, her benefits stopped after they decided “she was no longer disabled.” ...

In that year, they were evicted from their home and have struggled every month to pay their bills. ...

There has been some movement in her case.

The Groovers tell Channel 9 that Social Security wants them to get a blood test to determine if Jennifer has that extra chromosome, which has not happened yet. ...

    In case you don't know the law, the Groovers don't have to produce any evidence whatsoever for their daughter to stay on benefits. The burden is squarely on Social Security to produce evidence that this young woman has improved. The agency's inability to find its old file isn't reason to cut her off benefits. 

    You would think that anyone would realize that Down Syndrome won't go away or get better with time but you never know just how foolish these things can get. I've had a client with retinitis pigmentosa denied because there was no recent evidence that she was blind. The old evidence wasn't enough. If you know anything about retinitis pigmentosa, you know it's a one way trip. Once your vision is gone, it's gone for good and there's no more point in going to an eye doctor.

Telephone Hearings Predominate -- Is That A Good Thing?

     From a recent presentation by the Commissioner of Social Security:

Click on image to view full size

    What if I told you that claimants who show up for in person hearings with an attorney win 5% more often than represented claimants who have telephone hearings? I can't tell you that because I don't know. I've seen no stats on this. Maybe there's some difference. Maybe there's not. You'd think that Social Security could generate those numbers but if they've compiled them, they haven't released them. And don't give me aggregate numbers on telephone hearings. We all know that unrepresented claimants with in person hearings lose most of the time because they couldn't find an attorney to represent them and either didn't show up or show up and lose because of the same problems that made it hard for them to find an attorney.

Commissioner Doesn't Like Agency Notices

     From an interview that Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley recently gave to NPR:

The notices that we send out, I have described them as Mad Libs written by mad lawyers that confuse, they scare, and most people have a difficult time understanding what many of these notices even say.