Real People

     From a Richmond, VA television station:

Earl Barry is frustrated with what he said has been a "demoralizing" experience navigating the process to apply for disability through the Social Security Administration (SSA). Barry told CBS 6 he has been going back and forth with the SSA on claims for more than a year.

"It's been very difficult and I am under-- I had to seek therapy because I was considering suicide," Barry said. ...

In October 2022, Berry applied for disability and was denied.

He reapplied in December 2023, but again was denied. ...

In March 2024, Barry said the company Premiere Disability filed a reconsideration request on his behalf. It's currently taking SSA seven months, on average, to respond to reconsideration requests.

Barry said Premier Disability recently informed him there could be a further delay.

"The representative found out that our appeal that we filed was not handled properly by SSA in March when they were supposed to have done it. They didn't transfer the file from the person who had it, the auditor, to the office for the appeal," Barry said.

But Barry said he can't afford to wait for assistance, should he get approved, any longer.

He said his savings have run dry and his Buckingham County house has now been foreclosed on. ...

Earlier this month, CBS 6 shared Ed Heavener's story, a Henrico County man who spent a year and a half waiting for disability and only got his money after our investigative reporters got involved. ...

After the story aired, CBS 6 newsroom was inundated with messages from people across Virginia and beyond, including Barry, complaining about customer service issues with SSA. ...

 

New Video On Commissioner's Goals

    Social Security has released a new video concerning the new Commissioner's goals. I wish I could it embed it here but I can't find a way so you'll have to click on the link. 

    Take a look and tell us your opinion.

NADE Newsletter

     The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization for those working at state Disability Determination Services (DDS) making initial and reconsideration determinations on Social Security disability claims, has issued its Summer 2024 newsletter.

ALJs Push Annual Leave Change

     From Government Executive:

Officials with a union that represents administrative law judges at the Social Security Administration are preparing for a push to pass legislation to expand the amount of annual leave they can carry over each year. ...

The Association of Administrative Law Judges said it has been hard at work in recent months to build bipartisan support in Congress for a legislative proposal to increase that cap to 90 days. Officials said the change would be fairer to ALJs who undergo more scrutiny than most other General Schedule employees and could offer a novel way to retain a highly specialized and aging workforce. ...

[The union president] said her organization’s proposal could help the agency in two ways. First, the agency has already seen the headcount of its ALJ corps shrink from 1,645 in 2018 to only 1,170 last year. Data from an internal survey of AALJ members found that in fiscal 2023, SSA administrative law judges forfeited an average of 27 hours of leave per year due to the annual leave cap, compared to just 0.75 hours of forfeited leave on average across the General Schedule from fiscal 2019 to 2023.

At a time when the agency projects the number of initial disability determinations to increase by more than 300,000 this fiscal year—and with them, appeals of those determinations—a boost to the leave cap could allow judges to take more cases. ...

    This sounds like a hard sell to me.

Interview With The Commissioner

     The CBS affiliate in Baltimore has done an interview with Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley. I'll give you a fair warning that there's not much news in it. Here's something I find very mildly interesting:

... Reporter: Is it pretty amazing to you that you're here doing this? You've been the mayor of Baltimore, the governor of the state and now the commissioner for Social Security Administration. 

Martin O'Malley: I would never have dreamed, I would never have guessed, this was not a card I ever would have picked up from the table, but I was honored when the White House called and asked me to do it, because think about it, I get to travel 22 minutes in the morning across Northern Parkway to be able to serve in the national headquarters of the Social Security Administration, which serves 80 million Americans. ...

What Can We Expect On Monday?

       A tweet from the Social Security Administration:

Social Security offices will open for public service on Monday, 7/22. Staff impacted by the widespread Microsoft and CrowdStrike issues are being brought back online. Our phone lines remain operational and many online services at http://ssa.gov remain available. 

     Great, but how capable will they be of doing business? And that’s just the field offices. What about other parts of the Social Security Administration, such as the Teleservice Centers, the Program Service Centers and the Office of Hearings Operations? I know OHO was able to hold hearings yesterday but I don’t know about their work otherwise.

Field Offices Closed Due To IT Outage

    An announcement just issued by Social Security:

Due to worldwide IT outage, local Social Security offices are closed to the public today. Longer wait times on our national 800 number are expected. Some online services are unavailable at this time. We appreciate your patience while we work to restore services as quickly as possible.

    What about hearing offices?

What About The "Third Signature" Problem At The Payment Centers?

     Yesterday, we heard that Social Security was increasing the amounts of SSI benefits that could be authorized by appropriate employees at agency field offices without approval from a supervisor. This cuts down on the number of times that a "second signature" is required before a payment can go out. That helps but I think the bigger problem has been with Disability Insurance Benefits and other benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act. Individual benefits authorizers at the Title II payment centers can only approve so much without obtaining a "second signature" and if the amount goes even higher a "third signature" is required and that can take several months. They never announce these limits but I think the "third signature" threshold has been something like $50,000. A claimant with a high Primary Insurance Amount can get up to this limit with only a little over a year of back benefits. Is something being done about the Title II problem? The situation with the "third signature" cases is terrible. With inflation and higher agency backlogs there are more of the "third signature" cases. These cause severe backlogs. If you're going to do something about the SSI cases you certainly ought to do something about the Title II cases.