The New York Times
February 19, 2001
Federal Panel Warns Bush of Social Security Problems
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - The quality of service provided to the public by the
Social Security Administration has deteriorated in recent years, and the
problems are likely to grow as millions of baby boomers retire, a federal
advisory panel has told the Bush administration. Beneficiaries must wait
two to four hours for assistance at many field offices and often cannot obtain
accurate information by telephone, the panel said. Social Security's
disability programs, which provide assistance to 10 million people at a cost of
$90 billion a year, are in chaos, swamped with a backlog of claims and
litigation, the panel said. Eligibility decisions are not made in a
uniform or consistent manner, the panel said, and two-thirds of the people who
challenge the denial of disability benefits prevail on appeal, overturning the
initial decisions of the Social Security Administration. The Social
Security Advisory Board, a bipartisan panel of seven experts, sounds the alarm
in two reports to be issued this month. Improving service to the public
should be a top priority for the new administration and Congress, the panel
said.
"The Social Security Administration's capacity to serve the public is
increasingly at risk" because the agency's staff has shrunk while the
volume and complexity of its work have greatly increased, the panel said.
The number of Social Security employees has dropped 22 percent in the last 15
years, to 65,048, from 83,505 in 1985, the advisory panel said. But the number
of beneficiaries in programs run by Social Security increased by 26
percent in those years, to 51.7 million, from 41.1 million. The shortage
of staff has affected the agency's performance, causing "delays in payment
of benefits or payment of incorrect benefits," the advisory board said.
The chairman of the advisory panel, Stanford G. Ross, who was commissioner of
Social Security under President Jimmy Carter, said: "Unless there's
fundamental change, we will soon see disruptions of service. The Social Security
agency lacks the ability to handle existing workloads, and those workloads are
bound to increase in the next decade." In an interview, Mr. Ross
said: "Everybody knows there is a long- term deficit in the financing of
Social Security. But there's also a deficit in the agency's ability to provide
good service, and that should be equally alarming to Congress and the
public." The panel, created by a 1994 law to advise the president and
Congress, said the disability programs were "at the heart of Social
Security's service delivery problems." President Bush has not yet
named a Social Security commissioner. Charles P. Blahous, the head of Mr. Bush's
transition team at the Social Security Administration, said the problems
identified by the advisory board were "very real." White House
officials said Mr. Bush might try to address the problems in his budget request
for next year, but no final decisions have been made. Catherine Noe, a
spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration, said the agency had a
"a huge problem" because many of its most experienced managers,
supervisors and claims representatives would themselves retire in the next 10
years, just as the volume of work surges. Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr.,
the Florida Republican who is chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on
Social Security, said there was already "a significant gap between the
level of services that the public needs and that which the agency is
providing." Through its 65-year history, Social Security has earned a
reputation for providing superior service. It was ahead of other agencies in
preparing for year 2000 computer problems, and Social Security officials said
new technology could help them serve the 76 million members of the baby boom
generation. The agency recently announced that people could apply for
Social Security retirement benefits on the Internet. But, officials said, a
claimant must print a copy of the application form, sign it and mail or deliver
it to a Social Security office, with documents like a birth certificate.
Applications for disability benefits, which require medical evaluation of a
person's impairments, are far more complex and take much more time, Social
Security officials said. More than one-fifth of the people receiving disability
benefits have mental impairments. In its report, the advisory panel made
these points: DD "Telephone service is inadequate." The Social
Security Administration received 76 million calls on its toll-free telephone
number last year, but one-third of callers got busy signals or hung up while
waiting for assistance. Statistics show that the problems have increased in the
last few years. DD People who visit Social Security field offices often
find overcrowded waiting rooms. "Waits of two, three or four hours are not
uncommon." DD With field office workers continually pressed to
increase productivity, the quality of decisions suffers. As a result, some
claimants are improperly denied benefits and must pursue their claims through a
"slow and overloaded appeals process." DD Social Security
employees are having less "face-to-face contact with claimants." This
has increased the likelihood of errors and fraud. Social Security numbers have
become "a prime tool for illegal activity," in part because the
government issues Social Security numbers without rigorously examining the
documents offered as proof of identity. The advisory panel found
management problems throughout Social Security, but said they were particularly
severe in the disability programs, which account for two-thirds of the agency's
administrative budget, $5 billion of the $7.1 billion total this year. The
number of people receiving disability insurance benefits from Social Security is
expected to increase by more than 40 percent in the coming decade, as aging baby
boomers suffer disabling injuries and illnesses, the board said. This
growth will overwhelm Social Security, whose administrative capabilities are
"already inadequate to meet the needs of the public," the panel said.
The disability program is supposed to be governed by federal laws and a
uniform set of federal policies. But people find it much easier to obtain
benefits in some states than in others, the board said, and it could not explain
the variations. The proportion of claims approved last year ranged from a
high of 65 percent in New Hampshire to a low of 31 percent in Texas, with a
national average of 45 percent. The approval rate was 44 percent in New York, 55
percent in New Jersey and 58 percent in Connecticut.