Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

May/June 2000

Another Visit To The Hill
by Marty Marshall, Legislative Committee Chair

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2000, NADE President, Terri Spurgeon, President-elect, Sue Heflin, Past-President, Jeff Price and I visited a number of congressional offices to introduce NADE and/or to discuss budget concerns, Prototype issues and NADE’s Position Paper on the elimination of the five month waiting period. Although most of those we spoke with agreed with the basic rationale for eliminating the waiting period, they are concerned about the effect this would have on program costs.

We stopped first at the office Sen. Mary Landrieu (LA) where we left copies of our February 10, 2000 testimony and our Position Paper. Our first scheduled meeting was with Louisiana Sen. John Breaux’s Legislative Assistant. However, she was unexpectedly called away and that meeting was postponed to a later time, which presented an opportunity for a drop-in visit with North Carolina Sen. John Edward’s Legislative Assistant. This turned out to be a fairly lengthy meeting and we were able to discuss our Position Paper and other issues in some detail.

Following the meeting with Sen. Edward’s staff we went to the House side where we stopped at the office of Rep. Nancy Johnson, Chair of the Subcommittee on Social Security (Committee on Ways and Means), and then met with Christopher King, Rep. Jim McCreary’s Legislative Assistant. Because of NADE’s longstanding relationship with Rep. McCreary’s staff, we had already sent him copies of our testimony and Position Paper. We discussed the March 16, 2000 hearing at which NADE has been invited to present oral testimony. Mr. King asked us to provide him with suggestions for questions or issues we believe Rep. McCreary should raise during that hearing. Following those visits on the House side we returned to the Senate offices for our rescheduled meeting with Sen. Breaux’s Legislative Assistant and with Alexander Vachon, Chief Social Security and Welfare Analyst for the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Breaux is minority leader on the Senate Finance Committee. His was the only testimony presented during the solvency hearings in June to mention the disability program and at that time the staff of the House Subcommittee on Social Security recommended that we contact him. Although we have had some written correspondence with his office, this was our first opportunity to share information in person. The meeting went very well. Sen. Breaux’s Legislative Assistant was interested in both our Position Paper and our concerns about budget and staffing. She believes the Finance Committee may have some Hearings on SSA’s readiness for the impending Baby Boomer workload. If so, they would be interested in our input.

We had previously mentioned our proposal on the elimination of the five month waiting period to Alexander Vachon and at this meeting we shared a copy of our Position Paper. The Finance Committee is currently interested in SSA’s service delivery and in solvency issues. Again the issue of the cost of eliminating the waiting period is of paramount concern. Although Mr. Vachon understands the public service issues involved in eliminating the waiting period, he does not think this is a viable proposition. (Because we agree that this is an expensive proposal we don’t expect immediate acceptance, or even necessarily an enthusiastic reception, but we do feel that this is an issue which needs to be considered.) We returned to the House side for a lengthy meeting and a wide-ranging discussion with Kim Hildred, Staff Director, and Beverly Crawford, Professional Staff, of the Subcommittee on Social Security. Again we talked about budget problems and our Position Paper as well as the proposed changes in the listings, the current emphasis on functionality and the difficulties this presents for adjudicators, staff morale and other Prototype issues. We then met with Ron Haskins, Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Human Resources. This Subcommittee was instrumental in the enactment of the Welfare Reform legislation which lead to the childhood reviews. Mr. Haskins seemed very surprised to learn that we had reviewed -and re-reviewed--these claims three times as a result of advocate concerns that too many children had lost benefits.

Our final visit was with the Subcommittee on Health to discuss their recent hearing on the proposed regulations regarding the privacy of individually identifiable health information. We shared a copy of NADE’s comments on this NPRM and discussed our concerns that if these regulations become too restrictive our ability to obtain medical evidence-and thus to adjudicate cases-will be severely compromised. We were advised that Social Security’s concerns and need for information were addressed in the proposed regulations but if the final regulation is more restrictive Congress will take steps to address this.