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Social Security Administration: People
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The proposal advanced by the New America Foundation, formally called the "Nonpartisan Social Security Reform Plan", comes at the tail end of a failed, nearly yearlong campaign by President Bush to sell the American people on privatizing Social Security. In January 2005 the story broke that the Social Security Administration leadership had politicized the agency by attempting to enlist career-level employees in the sales campaign. The effort quickly halted, though political appointees from SSA continued to travel around the country to promote privatization. By August 2005 the campaign was widely viewed as failed and the issue was considered dead.
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Think Social Security disbility payments will be there for you as soon as you need them? Think again, says this story in the Washington Post. Disabled Americans who apply for Social Security benefits often must wait two to three years to start receiving benefits because of a backlog of pending applications.It can take as long as 1,150 days to process an application, according to the Social Security Administration. For about half the time, the applications remain idle because a backlog of cases are unresolved because of legal appeals and other procedures.Out of 100 people who apply for disability benefits, on average 40 will be approved in about 125 days.About 35 of the 60 applications that were denied will go away, and about 25 will appeal.
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Social Security is not a retirement-savings program and was never meant to be. It is insurance, and it's not just for retired people. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin reminded everyone of that last week when he asked how payments to disabled workers would be affected by President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security.
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Social security contributions help pay the cost of health care for people aged 65 and older. A portion of the contributions finances Medicare hospital insurance (see Medicare and Medicaid). Voluntary medical insurance... available under Medicare, is financed by monthly premiums paid by the people who sign up for this protection and by matching contributions by the federal government. Administration of the Medicare program has been transferred to the Health Care Financing Administration.
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The administration ha advocated allowing workers to divert a percentage of the money they pay for Social Security benefits into stock market accounts. The administration argues that the stock market will pay higher yields, and that people should be able to control their own accounts.
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This time, Social Security Administrator Jo Anne B. Barnhart has vowed to go paperless by 2005 by creating electronic folders for the millions of people who apply for disability benefits each year. The idea is to let the far-flung agencies and doctors that handle the mountains of claims documents do so using common folders online. The agency hopes the effort will save money and ease the crushing case backlogs that have plagued the national disability insurance program for more than a decade.
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