The Pennsylvania Health Law Project will be offering informational workshops on some important changes in the ACCESS Plus program affecting program participants in Blair, Bedford, Cambria and Somerset counties. These workshops will be held on May 31, 2012 in Blair and Cambria counties.

As of July 1st, 2012, ACCESS Plus will no longer operate in Blair, Bedford, Cambria, and Somerset Counties. These counties will be moved into the HealthChoices Southwest Zone.

In order to educate consumers, families, and advocates in these counties about the upcoming changes, Pennsylvania Health Law Project (PHLP) is holding two training sessions on May 31, 2012 in Blair and Cambria Counties.

Electronic Medical Records Will Reduce Time for a Decision

The Social Security Administration and the Department of Defense (DoD) are working together to improve access to disability benefits for the nation’s Wounded Warriors, service members, veterans, and their dependents. A new nationwide project enables Social Security disability case processing sites to receive military medical records from multiple DoD facilities with a single request to a centralized DoD site. As of today, this initiative is in its first phase of nationwide expansion.

The Social Security Board of Trustees has released its annual report on the financial health of the Social Security Trust Funds. The combined assets of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds will be exhausted in 2033, three years sooner than projected last year. The DI Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2016, two years earlier than last year’s estimate. The Trustees also project that OASDI program costs will exceed non-interest income in 2012 and will remain higher throughout the remainder of the 75-year period.

“This year’s Trustees Report contains troubling, but not unexpected, projections about Social Security’s finances. It once again emphasizes that Congress needs to act to ensure the long-term solvency of this important program, and needs to act within four years to avoid automatic cuts to people receiving disability benefits,” said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security.

As many as 140,000 Americans nationwide will get their Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits restored as a result of an order issued by Judge Sidney H. Stein in a federal court in Manhattan on April 13, 2012. The benefits in question date back to October 2006 and may total $1 billion.

The order is the culmination of more than five years of litigation in Clark v. Astrue - Docket No. 06-15521 (S.D.N.Y.) - a case brought against the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) challenging its practice of relying exclusively on outstanding probation and parole warrants as sufficient evidence that individuals are in fact violating a condition of probation or parole as a basis for denying them benefits. Rather than check the facts of a case, SSA merely matched warrant databases against its records. When it found a probation or parole warrant in the name of someone who was receiving benefits, SSA checked with law enforcement and, if the law enforcement agency was not actively pursuing the individual, SSA would cut off that individual's benefits.