In Plain Service

  While controversial, I applaud SSA’s shift toward frontline service. The agency serves more than 300 million Social Security number holders. It also serves more than 75 million beneficiaries through online services, telephone service, and more than 1,200 field offices. The scale of that mission supports placing a large share of the workforce in direct service and the operations that complete the work. SSA performance data SSA organization That principle is also found in private industry. Banks employ more than 317,000 tellers and 153,000 customer-service representatives. They also employ more than 350,000 loan officers and loan-processing staff. Insurance companies employ hundreds of thousands of agents, claims staff, and policy-processing employees. These industries combine public contact with processing, technology, compliance, and management. BLS banking workforce data BLS insurance workforce data The comparison has limits. Social Security cases can involve earnings, marriag...

  For thousands of Social Security disability claimants, an Eligible for Direct Payment Non-Attorney representative is a critical lifeline. EDPNAs help people gather medical evidence, understand SSA’s rules, meet appeal deadlines, prepare for hearings, and explain why their conditions prevent them from working. In many communities, they provide representation that might otherwise be unavailable. Without them, thousands of disabled people would face one of the federal government’s most complicated administrative processes alone. William is one of those claimants. He worked for as long as his health allowed. He went to his doctors, followed the prescribed treatment, kept his appointments, and answered SSA’s questions. When his condition finally made continued work impossible, he applied for disability benefits and sought help from an EDPNA. William chose carefully. His representative was experienced, understood SSA policy, and knew how to develop medical and vocational evidence. The ...

  In the late 1950s, Soviet geneticist Dmitry Belyaev began breeding silver foxes based largely on how they responded to people. An experiment in Darwinian pacification. Foxes that showed the least fear and aggression were selected to reproduce. Within several generations, some began approaching caretakers, wagging their tails, and displaying other behaviors associated with domesticated animals. The broader scientific claims remain debated, but the experiment still demonstrates a narrower point: sustained selection pressure can change the character of a population. Organizations also create selection pressure. They do not change people genetically, of course, but they determine which behaviors are rewarded, which people are promoted, and which traits gradually become common among their leaders. Over time, an organization gets more of what it selects for, whether it intends to or not. The federal government is no exception. Many career senior executives are selected only after years...

  We are on the cusp of a major consolidation within the Social Security disability representation community. The economics are becoming too difficult for many small firms and local practitioners to sustain. Larger organizations can centralize intake, spread their risk across thousands of claims, automate routine work, and absorb years of delay. Smaller practices must carry the same cases, comply with the same rules, and wait for the same decisions without having the same financial cushion. No one gets rich from Social Security disability, not the claimant and not the attorney. The claimant has generally lost the ability to earn a living and must prove it through an administrative process that can take months or years. The attorney accepts a case with no guarantee of success, no guarantee of payment, and little control over how long the process will take. Both sides are operating within a system built around scarcity. For the claimant, the numbers are sobering. The maximum federal ...