Special Fraud Prevention Unit

     A press release from Social Security:

Today, Carolyn W. Colvin, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, announced the establishment of a centralized fraud prevention unit in New York City to identify potential fraud and detect fraud trends that can be applied to disability cases nationwide.  This unit consists of experienced disability examiners who are currently involved in the re-review of disability medical decisions resulting from recent indictments in Puerto Rico and New York City.  Using their specialized experience, they will collaborate with Social Security systems personnel to help build data analytics to detect and prevent fraud at the earliest possible point in the disability decision-making process.

“Social Security strives to preserve the public’s trust in our programs and we have no tolerance for fraud.  We are aggressive in our efforts to detect and prevent fraud,” said Acting Commissioner Colvin, noting that Social Security’s anti-fraud approach has resulted in a fraud incidence rate that is a fraction of one percent.  “The employees in our anti-fraud unit will be our national experts, and we plan to compile data from their work to help us develop further analytical tools to find potential fraud.” 

This first-of-its-kind unit will start with 20 disability examiners at the Addabbo Federal Building in Jamaica, New York.  Based on the trends found in the Puerto Rico and New York cases, along with further analysis of doctors’ reports, the unit will use their findings to help create the systems and data analytics that Social Security will use for disability applications nationwide.  As these systems develop and begin to identify new cases of potential fraud, the New York fraud prevention unit will analyze those cases to prevent fraud from happening before the agency makes a disability decision and authorizes payments.

Acting Commissioner Colvin added, “To those who would try to cheat us: We will find you; we will prosecute you; we will seek the maximum punishment allowable under the law; and we will fight to recover any money you’ve stolen from the American people.”

Why Does It Take Almost A Year Longer To Get A Hearing In Shreveport Than In Tupelo?

     It's taking 17 months to get a hearing on a Social Security disability claim in Tupelo. MS. In the neighboring state of Louisiana it's only taking 6 months to get a hearing Shreveport. Why? Oh, wait, I know, they're in different regions. Why does that  matter? Oh, I know another reason. They had a hurricane in Louisiana. Katrina was almost nine years ago and Shreveport is well north of New Orleans. How can that possibly matter? Social Security has spent tens of millions of dollars equipping its hearing offices for video hearings but can't get one region to help another or overcome the effects of a hurricane after nine years? Why is this? For that matter, why is the wait time 8 months in Augusta, GA but 17 months in Miami? They're both in the same region. Why do these discrepancies continue? Why doesn't the agency get serious about this?

Big Rep Payee Problem In Oregon -- An Update

     From Williamette Week:

Disabled Portlanders filed suit yesterday on behalf of about 700 recipients of Social Security benefits who fear their funds will be cut off when Safety Net of Oregon loses its federal qualification to manage their accounts on April 1, Street Roots News reported today.

 Kathy Wilde, the legal director for Disability Rights Oregon, one of the advocacy organizations supporting the lawsuit, says people served by Safety Net must sign up with another provider to handle their Social Security benefits. She says many could be evicted or lose bus passes and allowances for food and medication if they don't know Safety Net is closing its doors. 

About 300 clients have found other providers, but officials haven't been able to reach another 700 clients, Wilde said.

 “Many of these people are homeless, or on the verge of homelessness, and most rely on these benefits for all, or almost all, of their income,” the lawsuit reads....

 Federal investigators seized computers and records from the Portland non-profit earlier this month after concerns mounted about how executives were handling its books.

     Update: Disability Rights Oregon has obtained a court order that assures that all who had Safety Net of Oregon as their representative payee will be paid in April. I think that Social Security would have taken care of this problem quickly even without the court order. I don't know that it would have been taken care of by April 1 without the court order, however.

Social Security's Foremothers

     Nancy Altman writes about Social Security's "Foremothers", the women who had prominent roles in the creation and development of Social Security in the United States.

Catch 22

     From First Coast News:

Tanner, 17, was born in Gainesville, Fla. and at one time had a valid Social Security card but lost it. Now, his mother, Wendy Andrews, is trying to get a replacement and discovered it is not as easy as it seems.

"Either you need a school ID which he doesn't have one because he is in private school, or a state ID or a passport," said Andrews,"but in order to get one of those, he needs to have a Social Security card." ... 

Andrews said a replacement card is now critical because of her child's education; he's on a scholarship. "He needs it for his scholarships" she said, "because he's on scholarship so he can attend a private school [because he's autistic]." 

Under Social Security guidelines, you can use a birth certificate to prove your child's age or citizenship but you cannot use it as proof of identity. ...

Andrews said there used to be a Social Security office in Putnam County but that's closed so she has been trying to resolve her problem by phone and that has only added to her frustration. 

 "I never thought it was going to be this hard to get a replacement card," she said," I could see if he had never had a card or he was an illegal alien. I don't understand why they can't just issue him a replacement."

The Role Of Overtime At Social Security

     Because of inadequate appropriations for its operations and huge uncertainty about how much money it would have to spend from year to year and even month to month, over the last decade Social Security came to rely more and more on employee overtime to get its work done. The overtime usually come in spurts once Social Security got an appropriation. Typically, work would slow to a crawl while Social Security was operating on a continuing funding resolution at the beginning on a fiscal year and would then surge once there was an appropriation. This happened because there was little overtime available during the continuing resolution but once it was over the agency would use overtime to try to catch up.

     I'm only seeing the narrow slice of the Social Security Administration that I'm dealing with but my theory is that things are different this year. Yes, I can certainly tell that some overtime was authorized after Social Security finally got its appropriation this year but it seems like far less than recent years. I know that Social Security is doing a good deal more hiring than in recent years. Has Acting Commissioner Colvin changed the priorities in this fiscal year -- less overtime, more hiring?

     I have mixed feelings about this change, if it has happened. In the long run, having more employees is definitely a good thing. It gives the agency a better ability to process its workload without the wild swings we've seen in recent years when the overtime spigot was turned on and off. On the other hand, as John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run, we are all dead." Hiring more people helps but only well down the road. It takes many months to hire and train new employees. Once you finally put the new people to work, they make mistakes that more experienced employees have to sort out. In the short run, the backlogs seem to be growing, not shrinking as they usually do in the first two or three months after the agency gets its appropriation.

     What is the situation with the overtime-new employee balance at Social Security? What's the strategy? How consistent is it across the agency?

People Undervalue The Importance Of Social Security -- Until They Retire

EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey

Cuts In Customer Service And The Future Of Social Security

     Michael Hiltzik writing about the cuts in customer service at Social Security, "revealed" by Mark Miler at Reuters (actually, I've been talking about these cuts for many years but it's good to see others paying attention):

It's no secret that if you really want to destroy a business, just hack away at its customer service. (Sears has been testing this axiom with considerable vigor.) The principle also holds true for government programs, which is why you should be very suspicious about the relentless budget-cutting at the Social Security Administration. ...

As Nancy Altman, co-director of the advocacy group Strengthen Social Security, told Miller, this is part of "a raging fight by conservatives to get rid of the government's footprint wherever possible." And since Social Security has long been in their cross hairs, it's unsurprising that a meat cleaver has been taken to its administrative budget. The budget request has been pared down in 14 of the last 16 years, Miller found. ...

The more those services deteriorate, the less faith people have fundamentally in Social Security, which is the strongest, most successful public program Congress has ever enacted. So when the program's customer services are slashed, think about who's really being served by the void that remains.

     It may be time to start talking about the latest right wing gambit to hurt Social Security. It goes something like this: "We'll give your agency more money but on the condition that you only spend the money on an enormous effort to find the vast criminal conspiracies that we know must be cheating the government out of billions of dollars." Of course, there are no vast criminal conspiracies so all the Social Security Administration can do is to spend a lot of money chasing down small time crooks while service to the millions of honest Americans who rely on Social Security continues to go to hell. The right wing will trumpet the existence of small time crooks as proof that Social Security is inherently corrupt while heaping scorn on the Social Security Administration for not finding the vast criminal conspiracies that exist in the imaginations of the right. It catches some small time crooks who deserve to be caught but the end result damages Social Security.
     I've got no problem with stepped up efforts at detecting fraud at Social Security so long as the agency can give good service to the public. I've got a problem with simultaneously cutting service at Social Security while spending a lot of money chasing down a few crooks. That's nuts.