Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul sat down with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to explain what changes he is making at the agency to improve customer service and to combat new Social Security schemes aimed at stealing benefits from Americans. Saul, rightfully so, is focused on improving customer service at Social Security field offices and on improving wait times for phone service with agency representatives, but it seems that Saul has a rather simplistic problem solving agenda. Below are Saul’s responses to the interview done with the AARP. A full version of the response can be found here.
For several years Social Security has closed its field offices early on Wednesdays. The main objective of this is to allow Social Security employees to manage administrative tasks without the immediate need to serve customers. Social Security has to issue letters and correspondence to individuals advising about eligibility and benefits and needs time to complete these tasks, so Saul’s move to expand hours on Wednesdays might actual have a negative impact on customer service. Despite this, Saul said expanding hours was a no-brainer.
“On one of my first field trips, I happened to notice on the door that we closed at 12 o’clock on Wednesdays. I frankly couldn’t believe it, because we were losing basically 10 percent of our available time to service our customers by being closed on Wednesday afternoons. Then I understood why Thursday morning, when we opened, was kind of bedlam — like a Monday morning. But as of the beginning of January, all our offices are now open for the full day, five days a week,” Saul told the AARP.
Saul also said he is focused on improving the customer service at Social Security’s 800 number where wait times could be an hour or longer. Saul said Social Security has hired over 1,000 new employees to assist and improve customer service, but one thing he failed to recognize is the quality of service is not the best. Many times customers are given incorrect or misleading information regarding a claim because the customer service representative may not have access to correct information or have the best training.
Finally Saul broached the topic that has many people upset. The Trump Administration has proposed a new rule that would increase the frequency of medical reviews of Social Security disability beneficiaries. Analysis shows this would cut benefits off from Americans. Add to this proposal, Trump’s 2021 budget proposal, which calls for a reduction of funding for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and it is not difficult to see what road the administration is going down.
Saul seemed to back the administration’s intentions by saying the move is due to outdated rules and improvement in medical care relating to less people being disabled. Saul failed to mention that Social Security’s threshold of proving disability is already higher than that of most other countries with similar types of programs.
Health care has completely changed in the last 50 years. Fortunately, some diseases that affect a lot of people today, 50 years ago, if you were diagnosed with that disease, you were finished. Today, a lot of productive people have had serious strokes, heart attacks, cancer. Very, very life-threatening diseases. Today, we have medicine that has really cured the problems and allowed people to go on with very successful lives, Saul said.
