We realize it may be a stretch for ordinary people to want to keep up with the comings and goings of the Social Security Administration, but sometimes circumstances permit where someone does want to follow the latest news regarding the agency due to a possible retirement or disability interest. This blog is an ongoing piecemeal of recent stories that have involved Social Security. Some are tidbits and some are important things that should be known in the world of retirement or disability and others are just interesting stories and nothing more.
Breach Causes Delays In Verifying Process
A news outlet is reporting that a recent Equifax breach is slowing down the online identification verification for government agencies, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. A portion of this report is below.
The 2017 Equifax security breach has thrown a wrench in the process used by US government agencies to verify the identity of US citizens applying for various benefits via its online portals.
This process, called online identity verification or remote identity proofing, relied on data provided by credit reporting agencies (CRAs) like Equifax, as a proof of the applicant’s identity.
Government systems or workers would verify data provided by a US citizen against a private CRA database, like the one maintained by Equifax, or they’d ask citizens questions about data that was present in their Equifax credit report.
But the 2017 Equifax hack, during which hackers stole details about the identities of 145.5 million US citizens, has made this process inaccurate and untrustworthy, as hackers and other online groups could also be in the possession of the same data, and not only the US citizen.
In 2017, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reacted to this hack by issuing guidance to government agencies, with recommendations on replacing the CRA-based online identity proofing with other solutions like sending an SMS to a user’s phone, or having the user send/upload a scan of a physical ID to the government agency, as a proof of identity.
Will The COLA Increase Be Much Smaller In 2020?
A report from The Motley Fool indicates that the 2020 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is likely to be less than the 2.8 percent increase in 2019. Below is the new outlets report indicating that the signs are not good that COLA will approach the increase from a year ago.
How Social Security gives out more money most years
The law governing Social Security requires benefits to adjust for changing prices on an annual basis. By focusing on changes in one of the measures of the consumer price index, specifically the CPI-W, the Social Security Administration tries to account for the impact that inflation has on pricing power for those receiving benefits. The numbers that go into producing the annual cost-of-living adjustment come from the three summer months: July, August, and September. As inflation data comes in from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Social Security recipients can see how those numbers will eventually produce the three-month average for 2019. The SSA takes that average and then compares it to the corresponding average over the same period in 2018. The percentage difference defines the amount of the cost-of-living adjustment.
Where COLAs look to be headed
The three-month average for 2018 came out to 246.352, with the trend during the three-month period moving slightly higher. The corresponding average for 2019 won’t be available until mid-October, when the final piece of the puzzle comes out in the form of the September CPI report.
