Today’s Washington Post reports on the deluge of applications for disability:

“Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.

“Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs — in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs — and can’t find new ones.The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants — many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.

Full story here:

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Today’s Washington Post reports:

Diane Braunstein’s large smile and warm laugh can be infectious. She speaks calmly as she sits in a high-backed, dark wooden chair in her spacious Baltimore office, a master bureaucrat.

If that seems a cold or callous characterization, her actions have been anything but. One look at her résumé shows she’s spent a lifetime mastering the minutia of process and regulation on behalf of the elderly, the ill and the disabled at the Social Security Administration and other organizations. Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue appointed Braunstein director of a program called Compassionate Allow­ances in 2007 after she helped him about 20 years earlier when his terminally ill father could not quickly obtain benefits.

The two were working together at the Department of Health and Human Services. Astrue’s father developed glioblastoma, an often-fatal brain cancer that resulted in a coma. Astrue found himself trying to file for benefits on behalf of someone who wasn’t able to speak.

“It was a huge surprise and a time of high anxiety,” he said. “Having someone as competent as Diane was a great blessing.” See story here:

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In today’s USA Today, this article discusses the growing numbers for pending cases. In spite of everything SSA is doing to reduce these times and numbers, it can’t seem to keep up with new applications:

“More than 728,000 Americans are awaiting appeal hearings for Social Security disability benefits, a 5% jump in pending cases during the last year, a new report shows.

“The increase, partly a result of more disabled persons unable to find jobs during the recession, may make it harder for the Social Security Administration to continue reducing waiting times for benefits rulings, according to the analysis.
“History shows that if this growth is unchecked, as hearing dockets become more and more clogged, wait times will grow,” said the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization at Syracuse University that studied the data through March 31.

“Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue questioned the significance of the increase in pending appeals, which new data from the agency shows have jumped to 740,998 as of May 27. While TRAC officials said that buttressed their report’s findings, Astrue said the more meaningful measure was the faster processing and decision-issuing times produced by his agency’s improvement efforts.

” However, he said it was uncertain whether the agency would meet its goal to reduce the average waiting time for benefits — 367 days on average nationally for October through April — to 270 days by 2013. The TRAC report cites agency statistics that show wait times peaked at an average of 514 days for cases disposed of in federal fiscal year 2008…” More details here:

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If you are over age 62, you can get an estimate of eligibility for your Social Security benefits online. Social Security recently announced that it will no longer be mailing benefit estimates annually. This straightforward site asks for some personal identification, your last year’s income, and then issues a form with your retirement benefit. This amount would also be your disability payment if you became disabled before your retirement age. Often it is more financially advantageous to take disability benefits rather than deeply discounted early retirement payments. Click thru to Social Security here:

There is also a page that estimates disability payments for younger claimants, and it requires you to enter income amounts for the past several years. See that form here:

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As tax day approaches, here is some information on changes made to the taxable status of your income this year, from an article in US NEws and World Report.

“The Social Security program will be tweaked in several important ways in 2011. Workers will get a temporary tax break on the amount they pay into the entitlement program, and several claiming options for retirees will be eliminated. Here’s a look at how the Social Security program will change this year.

“The amount workers pay into the Social Security trust fund will temporarily drop from 6.2 percent of taxable wages up to $106,800 annually to 4.2 percent in 2011 only. For self-employed workers, the Social Security tax rate will drop from 12.4 percent to 10.4 percent next year, due to provisions of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, signed by President Obama on December 17. Employers will continue to pay 6.2 percent of wages into the entitlement program.” See article here:

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Advocacy groups for people living with mental illness are uniformly opposed to a new rule proposed in August by the Social Security Administration that would affect eligibility for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The rule would revise the definition of a key term used to determine if people with mental disorders qualify as disabled. It would also allow SSA adjudicators to consider the results of standardized testing in adults.
Mental health advocates oppose multi-step eligibility test for mental impairments
The first contentious issue in the proposal is the SSA’s revised definition of the term “marked impairment,” which is used to determine if a mental illness or disorder affects the applicant’s ability to work enough to qualify as a disability.
Within the nine mental disability categories in the SSA’s list of disabling conditions, each listing has three paragraphs — A, B and C — that determine eligibility. Currently, an applicant is generally eligible for benefits either if he meets both the A and B requirements or the C requirement.
To meet the paragraph B requirements, the applicant has to demonstrate a marked functional impairment, which is currently defined as “more than moderate but less than extreme.”
The SSA’s proposal would change that, defining a “marked impairment” as symptoms that “interfere seriously with your using that mental ability independently, appropriately, effectively, and on a sustained basis to function in a work setting.” Applicants would have to show a marked limitation in two specific abilities, or an extreme limitation of one specific ability. The specific abilities include the capacity to understand, remember, and apply information; interact with others; concentrate, persist, and maintain pace; and manage oneself.

The problem is that there are no scientifically valid standardized tests for mental illness or other mental disabilities in adults. Nevertheless, the SSA laid out a detailed set of rules on how the results of such tests would be used in determining an adult’s eligibility for Social Security disability.
“We recognize that the proposed rule did not require the use of test results alone when making determinations of disability,” explained Linda Rosenberg, president and CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

The proposal was so controversial that the SSA was forced to reopen the comment period in November. Source: Blog, Law Office of Jeffrey Rabin,

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Compromised timing for a new data center transition and a slowdown in application modernization are among the top IT management challenges facing the Social Security Administration (SSA), according to a recent report by the agency’s inspector general (IG).
A report by SSA IG Patrick P. O’Carroll Jr., examining the top management challenges the agency will face in 2011, shows it grappling with a host of IT infrastructure projects the agency’s IG, Congress, and the SSA’s advisory board worry it can’t handle. See details here:

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Q: I’m 59 years old. I worked from 1968 to 1992. My highest earnings year ($35,570) was in 1991. My projected Social Security benefit at age 62 is $863 a month. If I go back to work now, what would I have to earn, and for how long, to significantly increase my monthly benefit?

You can significantly increase your monthly benefit just by postponing your application for Social Security. Even if you don’t work another day, you could boost your benefit to $1,151 a month – one-third more than you’d get at age 62 – by waiting until you’re 66 to start collecting it. (That extra $288 a month is just for the four-year delay; it doesn’t include any annual inflation adjustments, which would raise the amount even more.)

Returning to work also can increase your benefit, even if you earn less than your peak salary. Your monthly Social Security benefit is based on your 35 highest-earning years. Someone who retires from high-paying work after 40 years can boost his benefit a bit, even if he returns to work in a lower-paying job for only a year, because his new earnings may replace an early, lower-paid year in the benefit computation. See full details in this article:

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From today’s Chicago Tribune:

“Deep inside a 34-page proposed federal regulation are a few sentences that are causing nightmares for mental health advocacy groups.

“The regulation, from the Social Security Administration, could change how people with mental illnesses are evaluated for disability payments.

“The angst is over whether standardized testing will be required to determine such payments. The proposed regulation is not clear on that controversial subject. At one point it says standardized tests will not be required but then goes into detail on how the exams would be used to determine a person’s fitness for work.

‘The confusion over the wording — and fears that it will be interpreted to require testing — has advocates by the hundreds calling in comments to the Social Security Administration, which will accept them until Wednesday.”
“ Full story at this link:

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In September, Social Security published final rules about the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax (HEART) Act.

The HEART Act changes the way the agency treats certain cash payments to members of the uniformed services and veterans under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which will enable some of them to continue to receive government disability benefits and others to receive a higher benefit amount.

“This law allows the men and women of our armed forces, veterans, and their families to keep more of their military-related payments while also maintaining eligibility for valuable cash and healthcare benefits,” Commissioner Michael Astrue said. “We must provide support and assistance to our active duty military and our wounded warriors, and the HEART Act improves our ability to do so.”

Aged, blind or disabled individuals who have limited income and resources can qualify for monthly SSI benefits from the Social Security Administration and Medicaid from the states. As a general rule, if other income goes up, the SSI payment will go down. Income and resources are major factors used in deciding SSI eligibility and SSI payment amount.

The HEART Act does the following:

• Treats most cash military compensation as earned income for SSI purposes, which generally provides a higher benefit to the service member as a result of the SSI program’s more favorable consideration of earned income.

• Excludes certain state annuity payments to disabled, blind or aged veterans from countable income and resources used to determine SSI eligibility.

• Excludes any cash or in-kind payments provided by AmeriCorps State and National and AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps from countable income.

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