Social Security changes many of its payments, financial eligibility standards and taxes each year. This link to the Social Security web site sets out all the changes that will take place January 1, 2008. Click here to go to ssa.gov
For two years, Hugh Rowan, a Vietnam-era veteran, tried unsuccessfully to get his Social Security disability benefits restored.
“To say that Social Security representatives are not very receptive to you by phone would be an understatement,” said Rowan, 55, whose health problems crippled his ability to walk and to work.
Now, Rowan is no longer homebound and credits a University of Detroit Mercy law student and professor for turning his life around. Shortly after contacting the law school’s pilot veterans clinic, Social Security officials agreed to not only restore Rowan’s monthly benefits, but also to award him pay for the two years his benefits were wrongfully cut off, he said.
“It was very dramatic,” said Rowan, a Detroiter who served in the Air Force. “Two years without having income and the (resolution) happened almost instantaneously. I felt it was a true blessing.”
Social Security has proposed new regulatiosn which would drastically alter the way evidence is admitted in a Social Security claim. The proposal would maintain that all evidence must be submitted 5 days before the hearing, and that no further evidence would be allowed.
” Our program experience has convinced us that the late submission of evidence to the administrative law judge significantly impedes our ability to issue hearing decisions in a timely manner,†the agency said in its proposal.
But Democrats think the proposed rules are too strict.
“What if you’re having chemotherapy the day of the hearing, and you didn’t know that in advance?†a Ways and Means aide said. “It’s full of stuff like that. I just don’t see how beneficiaries could navigate this, and the actuary agrees — he says this is going to reduce benefits.â€
Nancy Shor, Executive Director of a national group of lawyers representing claimants in these cases, says that it is “really designed to discourage a claimant — particularly an unrepresented claimant — from appealing a denial of benefits.†About a third of those who appeal do not hire lawyers, she said. See full story here:
From NOSSCR (The National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, www.nosscr.org ): The FY 2008 Omnibus budget bill, which has been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, recommends a funding level for SSA of $9,746,953,000. The President’s FY 2008 budget request for SSA was $9,596,953,000. The first version of the Labor-HHS bill provided $275 million over the President’s budget, but was vetoed by the President. In fashioning a new bill, there was talk that most federal agencies would receive only the President’s request. The bill actually recommended an even higher number for SSA’s administrative funding; however, that amount was reduced by an across-the-board cut of 1.747%, reducing the SSA funding level.
Bottom line: In the end, SSA came out ahead of the game, but not as much as we had hoped. After the across-the-board reduction, SSA’s administrative funding in the FY 08 Omnibus measure is $150.0 million over the President’s budget request – and $451.0 million over the FY 2007 level of funding.
In addition, the language in the Explanatory Statement accompanying the bill also removes the requirement from the President’s proposed budget that SSA perform additional Continuing Disability Reviews and SSI redeterminations of eligibility. While this will provide SSA with more flexibility to address other workloads including the disability backlogs, it may cause the CDR and SSI redetermination backlog to grow.
We are hopeful that the $150.0 million should allow SSA to hire ALJs and other staff to start addressing the hearings backlogs and keep the number of initial disability claims pending from rising.
If the President signs the bill, as is expected, this will be the first time in ten years that SSA has received at least the President’s request.
McClatchy Newpapers Reports from WASHINGTON: Veterans coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating mental ailments are discovering that their disability payments from the government vary widely depending on where they live, an exclusive McClatchy analysis has found.
As a result, many of the recent veterans who’re getting monthly payments for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes…So far, more than 43,000 recent veterans are on the disability compensation rolls for a range of mental conditions from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression and anxiety. Of those, more than 31,000 have PTSD, which has emerged as one of the signature injuries from the war on terrorism. Given the number of soldiers who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s a fraction of what the total will be.
The VA’s assessments of those injuries, however, are all over the map.
Of the recent veterans processed by the VA office in Albuquerque, N.M., 56 percent have high ratings for PTSD. Of those handled by the office in Fort Harrison, Mont., only 18 percent do, the McClatchy analysis found.
For people with disabilities, it is important that SSA improve its process for making disability determinations. We strongly support efforts to reduce unnecessary delays for claimants and to make the process more efficient, so long as the steps proposed do not affect the fairness of the process to determine a claimant’s entitlement to benefits. Any changes to the process must be measured against the extent to which they ensure fairness and protect the rights of people with disabilities.
The most significant proposed change would close the record to new evidence in two ways by:
Restricting the submission of evidence at the ALJ and Review Board (the replacement for the Appeals Council) regardless of its relevance to proving a claimant’s disability; and
Limiting the scope of review and ability to submit new evidence after a federal court or Review Board remands a case because of legal errors. To exacerbate the adverse effect of these changes, claimants would be advised to file new applications, potentially with detrimental consequences, and restricted in their ability to reopen prior claims.
Is there reason to believe that the real purpose of the changes is to reduce allowances? The proposed rule assumes that fewer claims would be allowed, with a more than $1.5 billion reduction in benefit payments over the next ten years. From our perspective as advocates for claimants with disabilities, this is not acceptable.
…A case in point is the worsening bureaucratic delays at the chronically underfunded Social Security Administration which have kept hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans from timely receipt of their Social Security disability benefits.
… the backlog of applicants who are awaiting a decision after appealing an initial rejection has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000. The average wait for an appeals hearing now exceeds 500 days, twice as long as applicants had to wait in 2000.
Typically two-thirds of those who appeal eventually win their cases. But during the long wait, their conditions may worsen and their lives often fall apart. More and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing. See Editorial here:
Today’s New York Times reports:
Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.
Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.
But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits for those judged unable to work or who face terminal illness.
The agency’s new plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to whittle down the backlog, which has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000, will require $100 million more than the president requested this year and still more in the future. The plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations.
See full details here:
A World War II Medal of Honor recipient couldn’t believe it when he learned about a Marine who was severely disfigured by a suicide bomber in Iraq and then had to fight the Department of Veterans Affairs to get full disability benefits.
Ty Ziegel, a Marine, was badly wounded in Iraq. He battled the VA over disability benefits when he returned.
Hershel “Woody” Williams — who won the Medal of Honor for his valor on Iwo Jima in 1945 — was one of thousands of CNN viewers and CNN.com users to express outrage over the struggle of Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel, 25, who lost part of his skull, half of his left arm and suffered multiple other injuries in the bombing just three days before Christmas 2004. His story was first broadcast on CNN three weeks ago.
The VA’s initial assessment of Ziegel’s disabilities shocked him — from facial disfigurement rated at 80 percent to a mere 10 percent for his head trauma.
On top of that, he got nothing for his left lobe brain injury, right eye blindness and jaw fracture. It was only after he pressed the office of then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson that he got compensation for having a traumatic brain injury and other severe injuries. See full CNN story here:
WASHINGTON — The scene resembled Hollywood’s version of how a multibillion-dollar legal deal might be negotiated. Big-name corporate law firm. Posh conference room, with a conference table so large 70 attorneys fit easily around it. Video technicians, hovering nearby, beam the meeting to other big law firms from Boston to Seattle.
Yet there was no deal to cut. Instead, the high-powered lawyers were getting a tutorial in the arcane vagaries of veterans law.
“This could be the VA’s worst nightmare,” Bart Stichman, one of the organizers, enthused from the podium. “Hundreds of attorneys from around the country providing legal service to veterans for free.”