Haven't Had Time To Get Around To It?

     If I remember correctly, since 1982 claimants who are facing the termination of their Social Security disability benefits on the grounds that they have medically improved have been able to ask that their disability benefits be continued while they appeal the decision to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). Even though it's been more than 30 years, Social Security still has no form for asking for benefit continuation. Various field offices have cobbled together their own forms or just do something ad hoc for each case but there's no official form. Why?

A Basic Question

     Why does the online claim form for Supplemental Security Income disability benefits used internally by Social Security request the date that disability began? You can't get benefits until the month after the month you file the claim. An alleged onset date prior to the date of the claim is meaningless. Yes, I suppose an alleged onset date before a prior denial is an implied request to reopen but the claimant can always make an express request to reopen. I keep getting Administrative Law Judges being concerned about an SSI alleged onset date that goes back several years and I have to keep saying we regard that as of no consequence, that we'll amend to the date of the claim since it makes no difference. But why does the form even request an alleged onset date? The paper form, which is rarely used these days, doesn't request an alleged onset date so why should the computer based form?

Arlington, VA Field Office To Close

     One of the justifications that the Social Security Administration uses for closing field offices is population shifts. It may be painful but areas that lose population do stand to lose offices. However, now comes word that Social Security is closing its field office in Arlington, VA. Not only is Arlington not losing population, its population went up by 13% between 2010 and 2017. This is a sign of how serious Social Security's appropriations problem is. Forget the happy talk about how their appropriation just went up. That's all earmarked for contractors. Otherwise, the agency didn't get enough to cover inflation. They're still starved for the operating funds needed to keep field offices open.

Social Security Employee Sentencted For Role In Immigration Fraud

     From the Sacramento Bee:

A longtime Social Security Administration employee has been sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for her participation in an immigration fraud conspiracy. ... 

 Nelli Kesoyan, 46, of Rancho Cordova was sentenced Friday in federal court in Sacramento for conspiring to make false statements in a matter related to naturalization and citizenship and to obstruct, impede, or influence a pending agency proceeding, and for falsifying government records, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release. She was convicted in January following a four-day jury trial. ...  

 Evidence was presented during Kesoyan's trial that she had abused her position as a claims representative with the Social Security Administration in Sacramento by creating false documents and falsifying government records in an attempt to help Movsesyan commit fraud in two naturalization applications. ...

Social Security Seeking Applications For Retirement and Disability Research Consortium

     A notice from the Social Security Administration:

The Social Security Administration's Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics is seeking competitive applications for a Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC). The RDRC is an extramural social science research program on matters related to retirement and disability policy funded by SSA through 5-year cooperative agreements. 

The announcement is available on Grants.gov and may be accessed directly at https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=303915. Applications are due June 8, 2018. 

     Currently, there's a Disability Research Consortium composed of  Mathematica Policy Research's Center for Studying Disability Policy and the National Bureau of Economic Research's Disability Research Center and a Retirement Research Consortium composed of Boston College, the University of Michigan, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. I don't know if this announcement is a sign that Social Security is planning a consolidation or some other change.
     In my opinion, it's all a waste of money anyway. I've never seen any of this research affect Social Security policy or practice. I wish academics all the best but I see no point in the Social Security Administration giving them public subsidies at a time when there are lines out the doors at the agency's field offices. I should say that this research is required by the agency's appropriations. The agency has no choice but to fund it.

Safer To Keep It Confidential

     From a recent Emergency Message issued by the Social Security Administration:

On May 5, 2018, the Division of PolicyNet Management (DPM) will implement PPS Release 1.0. PPS is the Agency application for authoring, editing, approving, and publishing policy and instructional documents to PolicyNet. ...

     Is PolicyNet available to the public? Of course, not. If you tell the public what the policy is, they're going to complain when the agency doesn't follow its own policy or they might complain that some of the policies are illegal or stupid. Besides, most of PolicyNet is really boring and the public won't be interested in most of it. A small amount of PolicyNet would be things Social Security really does have to keep secret, like how it spots identity theft. It's safer to keep it all confidential. 
     Come on, this is the public's business the agency is doing. Keeping policy secret if you don't have to is wrong. You could say the same things about POMS, the agency's general manual, but somehow the agency has survived just fine with POMS being available to the public.

An Overpayment In Atlanta

     From an Atlanta television station:

... After fourteen years with no problems, the agency admits it made a mistake and they want her to pay them back to the tune of almost a quarter million dollars, and 63 year old Jamella Hall doesn't have it. ...

Documents show the Social Security Administration determined in 1998 that Hall qualified for disability benefits, which never exceeded $1,600 a month. But in September of 2017, after 14 years with no problems, the  agency notified Hall she should have been paid $215,000 less and the agency would be taking back $436 dollars a month for 493 months. That's 41 years. ...

Records show Hall was given 60 days to request an appeal. But one year later, she's still waiting and the disabled former teacher's monthly benefits have diminished to $1. Her sister, who's been footing the bills, says they're almost bankrupt. ...

After repeated efforts to get answers, the giant agency's regional communications director declined to comment stating privacy laws. But the director did apologize for the inconvenience to Hall and stated her issue would be addressed.

One week later, Hall was told her payments would be resumed. ...

  There's no way for me to tell what happened in this case. In general, this is my list of priorities in dealing with an overpayment case:

1. Why was the claimant overpaid? 
2. Is Social Security correct is saying there is an overpayment? (I've had a couple of cases over the years where by the time we got through, Social Security admitted that not only was there no overpayment, they owed the claimant money!) 
3. Is the overpayment correctly computed? (The amount is usually incorrect; not sometimes, usually.)
4. Is it too late to appeal the fact of the overpayment?
5. Does the claimant qualify for waiver of the overpayment?
6. Even if the claimant doesn't qualify for waiver, is there a dependent on the account who was overpaid? Dependents almost always get waiver even if the primary beneficiary is a really bad actor.
7. Social Security is not supposed to be trying to collect on an overpayment until there's a reconsideration determination on the fact of the overpayment and/or waiver of the overpayment, which are two separate matters. Make sure they don't.
8. If we're past reconsideration, work out a repayment schedule so they don't seize all the monthly benefits while we're waiting for an Administrative Law Judge decision or appeal beyond that level. (Obviously, this woman needed this advice a long time ago.)
9. In the unlikely event the claimant has the money to make a lump sum payment of the overpayment, they'll give the claimant a discount. As much as this overpayment is, they'd probably take less than 50%.

     In other words, there's a lot an attorney can do in overpayment cases. Unfortunately, few of these claimants can pay a fee and there's no practical way for an attorney to represent a claimant on a contingent fee basis. Also, because attorneys can seldom get a fee from an overpayment case, most attorneys don't know how to handle the cases.

     By the way, this overpayment goes back quite a few years. It's very possible that this is one of the cases where a claimant reported return to work but Social Security made no record of it. This used to happen a lot until Congress ordered that Social Security create a system for recording reports of return to work. That's right. At one time Social Security lacked any system for recording reports of return to work which led to large numbers of overpayments that weren't the fault of the claimant.

Raising Full Retirement Age Is A Bad Idea

     From Michael Hiltzik, writing for the Los Angeles Times:

Washington wonks love to portray raising the retirement age for Social Security as a painless "fix" for the program's finances. ...

But a new study punctures this argument with stark data showing that within the average there are winners and losers — mostly distinguished by household earnings and wealth. The analysis comes from the Social Security actuaries, who showed in a study released last week that mortality rates among people 62 and older are inextricably linked to lifetime earnings. The higher the earnings, the lower the mortality rate. ...

What the actuaries found is that lifetime earnings are a powerful predictor of mortality. As Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, among men ages 65 to 69, those in the lowest 20% of lifetime earnings (less than $22,400 a year) had death rates more than three times as high as those in the top 20% (annual earnings of $74,356 or more). Specifically, the lowest-income group had a mortality rate 65% higher than the average of all men ages 65 to 69, while the highest-earning had a rate 39% less than the average. ...

As we've written before, these factors help to explain why proposals to raise the retirement age tend to come from well-nurtured policy wonks comfortably ensconced in Washington think tanks, or from members of Congress assured of a decent government pension after they leave office. ...