Social Security, Please Hold

Thank you for calling Social Security, Your Estimated Wait Time is…

No matter what the situation is, sometimes when we have a problem, we just want to speak to someone. We don’t want to listen to a lengthy message only to click on some options and then be told we can’t be helped and ‘good bye’…we don’t want to speak to a machine who doesn’t really understand us…we don’t want to look up our problem online….and we don’t want to listen to music we would never choose in the first place for an estimated 45 minutes plus.

There is a simple explanation to the wait time – SSA is UNDERSTAFFED. You may read that and immediately wonder why you should care – you should and you must – and it is important to keep in mind the never-ending dilemma we are in.

Remember in last week’s post when we said “… Social Security is just like a business or any household – if year after year money going out is more than money coming in, you’re headed for a problem”…well, the money going out part of the equation is not just your benefits, it is also expenses.

Whenever we hear about the administrative expenses for a fund or a pension or anything that involves us hard working folks getting our money, we frankly don’t care – expenses are the other party’s problem – well, not really.

It is all one machine that needs input and output to keep moving so, we’re all in this together. Here is one fact – we need social security workers – unless and until the whole organization can be run by robots (who knows), we need people. We need them to:

• Make sure we get our benefits check
• Investigate a claim
• Approve or deny a claim
• Enroll us is Medicare
• And of course, the many, many other jobs that keep the whole thing moving along

The staffing crisis at SSA is nothing new – it’s just that it keeps getting worse. The number of beneficiaries is increasing (i.e., more processing work) and the staffing levels are at a 25 year low. Employees are burning out and leaving for other jobs and hiring is way down.

This can – and has – led to a variety of MAJOR issues. One example – millions of people are getting more benefits that they should. That sounds great until SSA catches their error and then you are on the hook.

SO it is all tied together, and we should be concerned about staffing shortages because this all points back to the cuts we have been discussing. The bottom line is, SSA needs more funding. Where it comes from is not our decision.

To try to end on a high note, SSA Commissioner Martin O”Malley does seem to be approaching the problem in two ways. One, get funding – which as we know from what we wrote on last week is often in flux. Two, make what we have better. He set up a system called SecurityStat which analyzes the performance of various functions with the aim of making them all more efficient. Albeit a giant undertaking with slow progress, it seems to be working. All three focus areas – 800 customer service line wait times, processing time for disability determinations, and over/under-payment injustices – have experienced a significant reduction. The office had released their accomplishments in the First 100 Days and statistics since have shown the improvements have continued.

As far as the budget goes, discussions are ongoing. However, improving efficiency and streamlining operations are always productive uses of time – these efforts will at least help insulate the SSA should their budget not reach the level they hoped for.

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