University Daily Kansan, June 8, 1983
Page 7
Administration to ease disability rules
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Under fire for its crackdown on the $18 billion Social Security disability program, the administration will relax its rules and mandated people from benefit cutoffs. The margaret Heckler said Tuesday.
Heckler said the lazer rules will cost taxpayers up to one-half the program's projected savings for 1984-86, or $300 million.
"We are responding with clear-cut actions that will put the highest premium on fairness and compassion and will minimize the chance for injustice, dislocation and personal trauma," she said.
She told a news conference 200,000 recipients will be permanently exempt
Heckler said the administration will stop singling out high-risk cases for review, and will ask Congress to make permanent a law set to expire next June that continues benefits during appeal for those dropped from the rolls.
The administration's announcement comes only two weeks after widely publicized reports.
being stopped for Roy Benavidez, a Medal of Honor winner embraced by President Reagan in a White House ceremony two years ago.
Heckler said reforms were already in motion, but the Benavidze case prompted Reagan to ask about them. She said the changes would not necessarily have kept Benavidze on the rolls.
THE REFORMS come amid growing criticism in Congress, where several bills are pending to liberalize the program, including one to declare a moratorium on dropping the mentally ill from the rolls.
The sponsor of that moratorium bill, Sen. John Heinz, R-PA., said he "glad the administration finally acknowledges the carnage that is being inflicted on beneficiaries." But he said, "We need to go much further."
Sen. Carlin Levin, D-Mich., said the changes are "very modest and disappointing." He joins Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, in urging a reversal of the disability policies, and said the Social Security Administration has taken time benefits during the appeals stage.
The Reagan administration began stepping up eligibility reviews in March 1981, citing a General Accounting
Office study showing 20 percent on the rolls did not belong. Since then, 355,000 people were ordered off, but successful appeals reduced the number to 266,500, 34 percent of those reviewed, as of March 31.
ALTHOUGH CONGRESS ordered the reviews, critics say the Reagan administration is implementing them more gusto than medical evidence.
The 27-year-old program pays benefits to 3.9 million workers and dependents, based on a complex system accounting for handicap, ability to work, education, age and vocational training.
Critics praised the changes, but said they did not go far enough
"They just barely touched two or three of the major concerns," said Myrl Weinberg of the Association for Retarded Citizens.
SHE SAID THE administration omitted "an absolutely critical provision and safeguard that we need right now," a change that would require improvement in a recipient's medical condition before benefits were stopped.
Heckler said the administration will study that issue as well as updating
eligibility criteria and "all other policies and procedures" including those that "set the tone of the adjudicatory climate."
Details of the changes;
Permanent exemption of 200,000 people from eligibility reviews, bringing those exempt to more than 1 million, or 37 percent of those on the rolls. Those exempt are considered to have permanent disorders.
A moratorium on benefit cutoffs to 135,000 mentally ill people with functional psychotic disorders, about two-thirds of those on the rolls, pending a review of the rules. After new rules are adopted, Social Security will look again at similar cases dropped in the past to see if they can be reinstated.
RANDOM REVIEW of those on the roll, instead of singling out the cases most likely to be ruded not disabled. To reduce the case backlog, officials say
Ask Congress to continue the law paying benefits through the first level of appeal for those dropped from the rolls.
Ask Congress to allow Social Security officials to include in its quality control reviews cases dropped from the rolls, as well as cases kept on.
FAA head denounces safety board's report
PARK PLAZA SOUTH APTS.
By United Press International
WASHINGTON—The head of the Federal Aviation Administration yesterday denounced a National Transportation Safety Board report questioning air safety in the wake of the August 1981 controllers' strike
1912 W. 25th 842-3416
FAA Administrator J. Lynn Helms told a House transportation subcommittee the NTSB report "is simply not a high quality document and plays down the record of no accidents due to controller error.
"Safety has not been compromised at any step during our rebuilding of the air traffic control system, nor will it be." The fact is there has not been one single accident investigated by the board or by the air traffic control system since the strike," Helms said.
near-misses go unreported, many senior controllers at the busiest airports are working six days a week with little vacation and morale in the towers is flagging.
Burnett called for a reduction in air traffic instead of the increase to pre-strike levels Helms has said is occurring this year. He said traffic has returned to pre-strike levels with only about 50 percent of the number of pre-strike controllers at work.
In earlier testimony, NTSB Chairman Jim Burnett said some
Helms denied the NTSB claim that controllers are being required to handle more traffic than they are capable of. "That is simply not true. It has never been true. I have been exceedingly cautious — if anything, overcautious — in approving additional operations."
But Burnett said the lack of supervision of new controllers that results because supervisors must monitor radar sernets is a potential safety hazard.
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