OIG Report

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has filed its Semiannual Report to Congress. Here's a map from the report showing all of the OIG Cooperative Disability Investigation offices:

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     OIG obtained 372 criminal convictions or civil actions in the first half of the fiscal year and many of those did not concern disability benefits.

     By the way, why is it that these are disability investigation offices? Why don't they do investigations of other types of Social Security wrongdoing?

Finding Humor In The Death Master File

     Former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue gave an interview to This American Life on, of all things, Social Security's Death Master File. The interviewer found the concept of a Death Master File droll.

Forum On Social Security Disability

     The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has scheduled what they call "a conversation with some of the nation’s top disability experts and policymakers" for June 6 in Washington. Two of the speakers have focused their attention on ways to encourage disabled people to return to work. One speaker is a Democratic staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee and another is a career staffer at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Two Senators may speak.

More On SCOTUS Opinion In Smith v. Berryhill

     SCOTUSblog has posted an analysis of yesterday's Supreme Court opinion in Smith v. Berryhill. As usual, it's excellent.

Supreme Court Decision In Smith v. Berryhill

     From the syllabus of Smith v. Berryhill, a unanimous Supreme Court decision issued this morning: 

An Appeals Council dismissal on timeliness grounds after a claimant has had an ALJ hearing on the merits qualifies as a “final decision . . . made after a hearing” for purposes of allowing judicial review under §405(g).

The Changing Face Of Social Security's Backlog Problem

     I recently noticed that my firm's database shows that we have more cases awaiting either an initial or reconsideration determination than we have awaiting action by the Office of Hearings Operations. I don't think I've seen this since the 1980s.

    For good reason, we've had a lot of attention to Social Security's hearing backlog but that one is coming down rapidly. I haven't seen the national figures but even though the number of claims filed is down the state agency backlog seems to be growing.  It's certainly not shrinking. I've personally got a couple of cases stuck at the initial level since last July but I'm now getting cases scheduled for a hearing within six months after the request for hearing. Maybe one reason the hearing backlog is going down so rapidly is the increasing backlogs at the initial and reconsideration levels.

Memorial Day 2019

Why Let The Facts Stand In The Way Of The Story You Want To Present?

     From National Public Radio:

During and after the Great Recession, people turned to disability rolls in large numbers to make ends meet. This accelerated what had been going on for a generation, as the federal government's disability insurance program saw steady growth.

But now, for the first time in decades, the disability rolls are shrinking. More people with disabilities are returning to work and holding on to their jobs. With unemployment at a nearly 50-year low, companies are struggling to find workers. And that means people who had trouble finding a job in the past are suddenly in demand. That includes people with disabilities. ...

It's still unusual for people to leave the disability program and return to work. Less than 1% of recipients do so each year. But the numbers have been growing as the job market has improved. In 2017 more than 51,000 people traded disability checks for paychecks, up from about 32,000 four years earlier. ...

At the same time, aging baby boomers are moving from disability into retirement, and the government has made it harder to qualify for disability benefits. ...

When jobs evaporated during the Great Recession, many people turned to disability as a kind of de facto unemployment insurance. By 2013, nearly 1 out of every 4 workers in parts of Alabama was collecting a disability check. ...

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     NPR presents it as a fact that Americans are leaving Social Security disability benefits to go to work but then presents evidence that, in fact, very few people are leaving Social Security disability to go to work. There's been an increase but it has had only a trivial effect. They then present it as an established fact that during the Great Recession people turned to disability benefits as "de facto unemployment insurance" with no proof. Their own graphic demonstrates there's been almost no change in the labor force participation rate by disabled people over the years which completely undermines the story they're presenting. It's like they gathered the evidence about what happened and then decided to ignore it in favor of the simplistic story they wanted to present.

     I mean, just look at their chart! How do you look at that and then say that disabled people are streaming back to work?