Battle over Mandatory (aka “Entitlement”) Spending

[altmin]

Nearly 2,000 Social Security Workers Leaving Field Offices

AARP reiterates customer-service concerns as buyouts cut staff at local sites

www.aarp.org

Amid surging complaints about Social Security customer service, 40 of the program's local offices are set to lose a quarter or more of their employees as Social Security Administration (SSA) buyouts take effect this month.


The agency is aiming to shed about 7,000 jobs, reducing its workforce to 50,000. The agency says 2,500 workers have requested and been confirmed eligible for “voluntary separation incentive payments” of $15,000 to $25,000 and will leave their jobs by April 19. Of that group, at least 1,962 — nearly 80 percent — work in field offices directly serving the public.

 

[Huh?]

I don't understand the Speaker's point. Why shouldn't young men be on Medicaid if they are eligible? If they are poor enough, isn't that the funding mechanism for their access to ACA?

 

[superrific]

I don't understand the Speaker's point. Why shouldn't young men be on Medicaid if they are eligible? If they are poor enough, isn't that the funding mechanism for their access to ACA?

Yes, that's been my point. The Medicaid expansion was a vital part of Obamacare and if they slash Medicaid, it will make everyone's health insurance worse and more expensive. We'll be seeing a return to the days where hospitals would take crippling losses treating poor people with no health insurance, among other things.

The Pubs are lying about Medicaid because they are trying to present it as a welfare program, so as to gain the support of the usual suspects. We should not let them get away with it.

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]

Hopefully hyperbole…

Ex-Social Security Boss Sounds Alarm: DOGE Will Delay Checks in ‘Very Near Future’​

Ex-Social Security Boss Sounds Alarm: DOGE Will Delay Checks in ‘Very Near Future’

Martin O’Malley warned—yet again—that the SSA’s 89-year streak of sending monthly benefit payments could soon come to an end.

www.thedailybeast.com

“
Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley doubled down on his warning that beneficiaries could stop receiving payments because of the destruction wrought by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“I truly believe there’s going to be some interruption of benefits for some period of time, and I believe that will probably happen in the very near future,” O’Malley said at a Social Security town hall in Nassau County on Monday, according to the Long Island Press….”

 

[superrific]

Hopefully hyperbole…

Hopefully not. My hopes for the next two years is that Trump will fuck everything up so badly that we'll have a 1930s style blue wave and MAGA will die.

Remember how, in 2010, you couldn't find anyone who voted for W? Somehow he got elected twice even though nobody voted for him and everyone realized he was a buffoon.

That was sort of Trump in 2021. I want it to be all MAGA, for good.

 

[nycfan]

 

[BlooVooDoo]

$15B? lol

 

[nycfan]

 

[gtyellowjacket]

This is a little hard to follow. Georgias Medicaid spend is $16.6 billion a year. They spent $54 million in administrative costs implementing a work requirement, and provided $26 million worth of medical services. That's a small fraction of total spend and appropriate for a pilot program.

But the the goal of a work requirement program is probably to reduce Medicaid spending and only provide to folks that are working or otherwise qualified by age or disability. I guess maybe another goal would be to encourage people to work but I'm not sure how realistic that would be. Is anyone going to work just to get medicaid?

So the real measure that $54 million spent on administrative costs should be how much the program saved by getting people off the program that weren't working.

 

[Calheel]

This is a little hard to follow. Georgias Medicaid spend is $16.6 billion a year. They spent $54 million in administrative costs implementing a work requirement, and provided $26 million worth of medical services. That's a small fraction of total spend and appropriate for a pilot program.

But the the goal of a work requirement program is probably to reduce Medicaid spending and only provide to folks that are working or otherwise qualified by age or disability. I guess maybe another goal would be to encourage people to work but I'm not sure how realistic that would be. Is anyone going to work just to get medicaid?

So the real measure that $54 million spent on administrative costs should be how much the program saved by getting people off the program that weren't working.

John Oliver was all over this issue a few months ago. Watch the below video on the Georgia program. Starts at 18:00

 

[CeruleanBlueHeel]

We really need to remove the SSA tax cap. I say that as someone whom it would affect comparatively more so than ultra-wealthy people and lower middle class people. There's no reason for there to be a cap, IMO.

Lawmakers will probably wait until the final year before acting upon so obvious and simple lever to pull to shore up the fund.

 

[superrific]

This is a little hard to follow. Georgias Medicaid spend is $16.6 billion a year. They spent $54 million in administrative costs implementing a work requirement, and provided $26 million worth of medical services. That's a small fraction of total spend and appropriate for a pilot program.

But the the goal of a work requirement program is probably to reduce Medicaid spending and only provide to folks that are working or otherwise qualified by age or disability. I guess maybe another goal would be to encourage people to work but I'm not sure how realistic that would be. Is anyone going to work just to get medicaid?

So the real measure that $54 million spent on administrative costs should be how much the program saved by getting people off the program that weren't working.

The administrative costs are specific to the work-required health care pilot program. It wasn't the whole state of Georgia.

Put it this way: if you were a legislator and you were told to vote for an appropriation of $80M to expand health care in Georgia, would you vote for it if you knew that you were only getting $26M in care for that $80M?

 

[gtyellowjacket]

John Oliver was all over this issue a few months ago. Watch the below video on the Georgia program. Starts at 18:00

Yeah. That seems like an absolute disaster of bureaucratic red tape. But it does seem like it could be alleviated for a lot of people with links to the IRS or Georgia department of revenue or maybe ssa/fica.

Uploading documents is never going to work, but automating that process could effectively address that issue. I guess that's why you do the pilots. Learn from that kind of stuff.

 

[DiehardHeelFan]

Yeah. That seems like an absolute disaster of bureaucratic red tape. But it does seem like it could be alleviated for a lot of people with links to the IRS or Georgia department of revenue or maybe ssa/fica.

Uploading documents is never going to work, but automating that process could effectively address that issue. I guess that's why you do the pilots. Learn from that kind of stuff.

The Georgia program has been out for a few years. When are they gonna learn this kind of stuff?

 

[gtyellowjacket]

The Georgia program has been out for a few years. When are they gonna learn this kind of stuff?

Later. Like sometime in the near to medium long term. If they learn that kind of stuff at all. They might be trusting their soul to some backwoods southern lawyer and then it might never happen. I'm leaving on that midnight train to georgia so when I get down there I will know more snd report back to you.

 

[nycfan]

Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans​

Trump administration officials are considering eliminating age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working.

—> https://wapo.st/4qa8yoq

“… Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.

They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations like nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022.

…
Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security’s disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives….”

​

 

[nycfan]

Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans​

Trump administration officials are considering eliminating age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working.

—> https://wapo.st/4qa8yoq

“… Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.

They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations like nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022.

…
Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

Older workers who claim retirement benefits at age 62 rather than receive Social Security’s disability insurance would receive 30 percent less in benefits for the rest of their lives….”

​

“…
Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits.

Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time.

“We felt that so many more jobs are now available to disabled people,” said Mark Warshawsky, who led work on the earlier proposed rule as the SSA’s deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy during the first Trump administration. “The nature of work has changed.”…”

 

[nycfan]

“…
Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits.

Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time.

“We felt that so many more jobs are now available to disabled people,” said Mark Warshawsky, who led work on the earlier proposed rule as the SSA’s deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy during the first Trump administration. “The nature of work has changed.”…”

“… More than 15 million Americans receive monthly disability checks as part of two programs: Social Security Disability Insurance — for those with a work history who have become disabled before retirement — and Supplemental Security Income, an anti-poverty program for poor elderly and disabled people that pays about $800 per month.

At the same time, Social Security is working on plans to rescind a Biden-era rule that expanded SSI eligibility for recipients who live with relatives or roommates receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or other public assistance. Restoring stricter standards could roll back payments for about 400,000 Americans, according to an August report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities….”

 

[heelinhell]

“…
Conservatives have long argued that since Americans are living longer and fewer have jobs that require manual labor, many physically disabled workers could adapt to desk work, broadening their work options and resulting in fewer people being granted disability benefits.

Social Security officials prepared to issue a similar rule at the end of the first Trump administration but ran out of time.

“We felt that so many more jobs are now available to disabled people,” said Mark Warshawsky, who led work on the earlier proposed rule as the SSA’s deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy during the first Trump administration. “The nature of work has changed.”…”

Just the GQP doin' its thing...

I remember when Reagan was in office and the trend began to deny initial claims for SSI. The strategy was to deny the initial claim which would discourage folks from going through the appeals process. When I assessed that a patient would meet the official criteria, I encouraged them to file with the understanding that it may be rejected in the first round.

If they were rejected, I advised them to contact me and I would provide them with a list of Social Security appeals lawyers who would assist them in making the appeal and represent them in arguing for the appeal to be approved.