On a recent weekday morning, Will Smith had walked to the small Social Security Administration field office on Fifth Avenue in downtown McKeesport to get his Social Security card. He was met with a locked door and a sign telling him to use the agency’s website or to call a hotline. “We will resume in-person service at this office when...

As February is Black History Month, we’re taking some time to reflect on the black community’s unique intersections with Social Security and how history can inform future equity. One clear and simple truth that arises upon reflection is that raising the full Social Security retirement age would disproportionately hurt people of color and erase the equality the programs have historically...

SSA spokesman Hinkle said other efforts also are underway to improve access in the field. The staff has almost tripled the number of 15-minute in-office appointments it provides for “dire need” circumstances. The agency said it continues to modify procedures to eliminate red tape, by allowing applicants to use some secondary evidence and more online forms, and to attest in...

March 30 would be more than two years after the original shutdown, not to mention much later than public schools and many other basic government services resumed operations following their initial shutdowns. Republicans have called for an immediate reopening and criticized the Social Security Administration’s limited in-person services, which require appointments that aren’t easy to arrange. “This is a challenge...

We are heading towards a dismal threshold; at the state agencies the Social Security Administration (SSA) contracts with for initial-level medical determinations and the first level of appeals (called reconsideration), there will soon be over a million cases awaiting decisions. At the end of December 2021, there were 971,426 pending cases: 776,660 initial claims and 194,766 reconsiderations, according to SSA...

There have been a number of recent developments that indicate Social Security disability claimants will have better access to offices and hearings in the near future. As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, these developments are positive steps towards addressing the significant barriers to services people with disabilities encounter. The Social Security Administration (SSA) issued a press...

While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best-known for his activism fighting racial injustice, he had an equally powerful commitment to righting economic inequalities. In his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in the winter of 1964, Dr. King said “This problem of poverty is not only seen in the class division between the highly developed industrial nations and the so-called underdeveloped nations; it...

On April 16, 2021, the Social Security Administration (SSA) released policy guidance for people with long COVID.2 The first step that people have to take to qualify for benefits involves establishing a medically determinable impairment from COVID-19. For people who have or had COVID-19, there are three options to do this: A report of a positive viral test for COVID-19 A...

As we enter 2022, the second session of the 117th Congress is beginning.  While much of Washington, DC is still focused on the pandemic and continuing efforts to reach a deal on President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, NOSSCR remains focused on its top two priorities: raising the fee cap for Social Security disability representatives and eliminating the 5-month and...

Last week, President Biden released an Executive Order (EO) titled Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government with the broad goal of using technology to modernize Government services so that they are "simple to use, accessible, equitable, protective, transparent, and responsive for all people of the United States." Further, several of the EO's directives are...