Blog
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It looks like the new Social Security Commissioner, Martin O’Malley, is really taking charge. A number of changes have been implemented in the several weeks Commissioner O’Malley has been on the job. Among the most meaningful is decreasing the default overpayment withholding rate to 10% (or $10, whichever is greater) from 100%. This will significantly…
a week+ ago -
Social Security uses what is called the “fee agreement process” to pay representatives who help Claimants. For those signing an appropriate fee agreement Social Security will approve the agreement and pay the representative up to 25% of a retroactive fee. Since November 2022 that retroactive fee could not exceed $7,200. Sometime this fall the cap…
2+ weeks ago
News
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Summer 2021 Newsletter STILL STANDING…AND PRACTICING I published the first issue of Social Security & You in Spring of 1993. Some years I’ve published more issues than others. The most recent issue was dated Spring 2019: over 2 years ago. The world was a much different place then. Especially for me. Read the full newsletter…
2+ years ago -
Spring 2019 Newsletter An Opioid Story I’ve changed his name. Let’s call him Gerald. He was a laborer. And by that I don’t mean that he just did physical work. He was a card-carrying member the Labor’s Union local. And that meant a lot to him. I represented him for Social Security disability and Michigan…
4+ years ago
OBAMACARE SURVIVES SCOTUS
The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States by a 5-4 margin when Chief Justice, John Roberts, surprisingly joined the court’s 4 liberal members in upholding the law under the U.S. Constitution’s taxing power rather than the interstate commerce clause.
Attorney Crawforth happened to be in the Detroit Workers’ Compensation Agency on the morning the decision was released and was furiously checking his phone, along with most of the others present. And we were all surprised to learn that the deciding vote was Chief Justice Roberts and not the court’s usual swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
In fact, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority decision, rejecting the use of the commerce clause to uphold the sweeping federal insurance mandate, relying instead on an interpretation barely argued by the Obama administration during oral argument. Justice Robert’s rationale seemed to be analogous to “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”, regardless of what you call it. Since the penalty for the federal mandate is a tax, Justice Roberts reasoned that is no different than any other tax that aims to change behavior, such as those on cigarettes.
So for the time being the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. And despite the pledge of several state’s Republican governors (Michigan’s governor Snyder is not among them) not to create the insurance exchanges crucial to providing the affordable coverage necessary to implement the Act, the federal government has the authority to do so for them.
Since most of the provisions of the Act do not go into effect until 2014 there is plenty of time for Congress to repeal or modify the Act prior to implementation. Of course, if President Obama is re-elected he can veto any changes so opponents will have to rest their hopes on the fortunes of Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
Americans will have a clear choice this November in many areas and the Affordable Care Act is one of the most important.
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