Social Security Announces Preliminary Reopening Plan

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is preparing staff to return to field offices and resume normal, pre-pandemic operations as early as Jan. 3, 2022. 

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most services have been offered remotely since March 17, 2020. Generally, in-person appointments at Social Security field offices have been limited to critical situations, such as for people who are without food, medicine or shelter and need to apply for benefits or reinstate them.

The SSA’s draft plan for starting to reopen was recently published – click here to read it.  This “pre-decisional” document is not necessarily final, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

We know that senior SSA staff will begin to return to in-person work on December 1, 2021, with most other employees beginning their re-entry on January 3, 2022. Some employees will be able to telework full-time, while others will be required to work in person at least part of the time, depending on their job duties, the agency’s needs, and bargaining between SSA and employees’ unions.

The re-entry plan describes masking and physical distancing requirements for employees and visitors to SSA sites, and what actions SSA will take to keep offices as safe as possible, from air filters and hand sanitizer to testing and contract tracing.

We don’t yet know the hours that SSA offices will be open to the public, or the rules for when people will need appointments versus when they can walk in. It is possible that different offices might have different rules, or that the rules might change over time. Just like the process of shifting to telework at the start of the pandemic, the process of shifting back to in-person services nearly two years later is not likely to be completely smooth.

Contact our office today if you or anyone you know would like to learn more about qualifying for Social Security Disability benefits.

By: Joyce Trudeau of Premier Disability Services, LLC®

Half a Million Poor and Disabled Americans Left Behind by Social Security

The Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) 1,200 field offices have been closed for the last 20 months, with devastating effects for disabled Americans. Pre-pandemic, more than 43 million Americans were served at SSA field offices; the people most in need of walk-in, on-demand services included people with low- or zero-incomes, housing instability, limited English proficiency, or significant physical or mental disabilities that were themselves barriers to access. With office closures, their inability to file applications and appeals and to correct bureaucratic errors has led to historically unprecedented declines in people receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits.

In fiscal year (FY) 2021, SSA’s awards of SSDI benefits to disabled persons and their family members were down 25 percent relative to FY 2019. SSI disability awards, granted to people without much work history, were down even more, with a 30 percent decline.

Had SSI awards continued at the pre-pandemic level, there would have been 280,000 more SSI awards over the last two fiscal years. In the pre-pandemic years of FY 2017-2019, SSDI awards were declining only modestly; had that trend continued, there would have been 270,000 more SSDI awards in the last two fiscal years.

Even accounting for the fact that some SSI recipients also receive SSDI, these numbers suggest that the operational difficulties facing SSA since the pandemic began have resulted in about 500,000 fewer Americans being awarded disability benefits.

SSA admits that this awards decline is a major problem, and its own internal analysis shows the startling effects of field office closures. Only one month after field offices were closed in March 2020, applications for SSI from retirement-age adults, disabled adults, and parents of disabled children were down, respectively, by 55 percent, 32 percent, and 51 percent relative to prior year numbers.

The decline in awards has continued to the present period. SSDI and SSI awards for September 2021 were down 34 and 42 percent, respectively, from the figures for September 2019.

SSI and SSDI recipients are an economically vulnerable and racially diverse group. That 500,000 disabled Americans have been left behind is shocking and should prompt a serious discussion about affirmative, remedial actions by the agency that would also comport with President Biden’s Executive Order on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”

SSA, with input from the White House, is finalizing plans for a partial re-opening of its field offices in January. The reopening plan will mix teleworking and in-office staffing. This is a critical step, but simply opening office doors will be woefully inadequate without a panoply of other measures.

Read the full article: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/581522-half-a-million-poor-and-disabled-americans-left-behind-by-social-security

Contact our office today if you or anyone you know would like to learn more about qualifying for Social Security Disability benefits.

By: Devon Brady of Premier Disability Services, LLC®

Supreme Court to Consider Puerto Rico’s Exclusion from SSI Program

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, November 9, 2021, tackled the question of whether a decision by Congress five decades ago to exclude Puerto Rico from a federal program that provides benefits to low-income elderly, blind and disabled people was unlawful.

Some of the nine justices posed tough questions during arguments in the case to the lawyer for the U.S. government, which has appealed a lower court ruling that Puerto Rico’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program exclusion violated a U.S. Constitution mandate that laws apply equally to everyone.

But it remained unclear whether the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ultimately will rule in favor of Puerto Rican resident Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who received SSI benefits when he lived in New York but lost eligibility when he moved to Puerto Rico in 2013.

Many Puerto Ricans have long complained that the Caribbean island’s residents are treated worse than other Americans despite being U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico, which is not a state, is the most-populous of the U.S. territories, with about 3 million people.

SSI benefits are available to American citizens living in any of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, but not the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

If Vaello-Madero wins, more than 300,000 Puerto Rico residents could become eligible for the benefit at a cost that the U.S. government has estimated at $2 billion annually.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were from Puerto Rico, mentioned the history of Puerto Ricans being treated as second-class U.S. citizens.

“Puerto Ricans are citizens and the Constitution applies to them. Their needy people are being treated different than the needy people in the 50 states,” Sotomayor said.

The federal government’s central argument is that the congressional decision to exclude Puerto Rico was rational based on the fact that Puerto Ricans do not pay many federal taxes, including income tax.

Congress decided not to include Puerto Rico when it enacted the program in 1972. Puerto Ricans are eligible for a different government program, called Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled, that allows for more local control but not as much federal funding.

The appeal was originally filed by the former president’s administration. The Biden Administration has continued the appeal while at the same time urging Congress to extend SSI to Puerto Rico.

A provision extending SSI benefits to Puerto Rico is being considered as part of Democratic-backed social spending legislation being crafted in Congress. Enactment of the provision would limit the importance of the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling, due by the end of June.

Full article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-weighs-puerto-ricos-exclusion-benefits-program-2021-11-09/ 

Read more: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-vaello-madero/

Contact our office today if you or anyone you know would like to learn more about qualifying for Social Security Disability benefits.

By: Tom Klint of Premier Disability Services, LLC®