Social Security needs a budget boost post-pandemic to serve the public
Social Security’s customer service has suffered from more than a decade of budget cuts imposed by Congress.
Our worries about Social Security often focus on the program’s solvency issues, which threaten benefits if left unresolved. But right now, we face a more immediate challenge: how to fund the Social Security Administration (SSA) as it climbs out of the COVID-19 crisis so that it can serve the public efficiently and equitably.
Social Security’s customer service has suffered from more than a decade of budget cuts imposed by Congress, and its operating budget dropped 13% from 2010 to 2021, adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, the number of Social Security beneficiaries grew by 22%, SSA data shows.
The cuts have hurt the agency’s ability to serve the public, and some problems worsened during the pandemic. The SSA shut down its sprawling national network of more than 1,200 offices in March 2020 in order to protect the public and its employees from the coronavirus. The offices served 43 million visitors in 2019 and the agency has been providing most services since then through its website and toll-free number (1-800-772-1213).
The challenge now is not only to bring SSA’s customer service operation back up to snuff, but to address inequities in how the pandemic has affected beneficiaries.
Learn more in my latest Reuters column.
Conversations about caregiving and race in America
My April story for The New York Times on the evolution of home-based care featured an interview with Regina Smith, a geriatric social worker whose own mother died in a nursing home after contracting Covid-19. “The very thing I fight for for others I was not able to do for my mom,” Ms. Smith told me at the time. That trauma made Ms. Smith much more skeptical about institutional care settings, and inspired her to work even harder to find solutions that keep clients at home.
I first heard about Regina from Anne Tumlinson, the founder of Daughterhood.org, a national network of caregivers who meet up to provide support to one another. Regina is one of the network’s national leaders. I talked with Anne on my podcast in the spring - if you missed that discussion, you can find it here.
Daughterhood.org produces its own podcast, and the latest installment features Regina Smith and another of the organization’s leaders, Jerri Brown.
They both tell really provocative stories about providing care and advocating in difficult circumstances perhaps worsened by being Black. “It’s a very real and deep discussion,” Anne says, “with examples of how African American patients are sometime thought of differently by those in the healthcare system because of a culture that has managed pain and endurance.”
Use the video link above to listen to the podcast.
What I’m reading
The secrets of cognitive super-agers . . . Private equity firms put retirees’ annuities in higher risks but also more cash . . . Caring for an aging nation: The number of Americans 65 and older is expected to nearly double in the next 40 years.