Court restores Social Security benefits for thousands

As many as 140,000 Americans nationwide will get their Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits restored as a result of an order issued by Judge Sidney H. Stein in a federal court in Manhattan on April 13, 2012.

The benefits in question date back to October 2006 and may total $1 billion.
The order is the culmination of more than five years of litigation in Clark v. Astrue – Docket No. 06-15521 (S.D.N.Y.) – a case brought against the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) challenging its practice of relying exclusively on outstanding probation and parole warrants as sufficient evidence that individuals are in fact violating a condition of probation or parole as a basis for denying them benefits.

Rather than check the facts of a case, SSA merely matched warrant databases against its records. When it found a probation or parole warrant in the name of someone who was receiving benefits, SSA checked with law enforcement and, if the law enforcement agency was not actively pursuing the individual, SSA would cut off that individual’s benefits. In March 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the agency’s practice of relying solely on outstanding probation or parole violation arrest warrants to suspend or deny benefits conflicted with the plain meaning of the Social Security Act.

Under Judge Stein’s order, the SSA is enjoined from denying or suspending benefits in this manner and must reinstate all previously suspended benefits retroactive to the date the benefits were suspended. The SSA has until June 12, 2012, to submit a plan setting forth its anticipated time frames for implementing the terms of the order.

For more, click here.

Terminally ill die while waiting for Social Security because of backlogs

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that backlogs at the Social Security Administration are so large that some terminally ill people die before they can collect benefits that are due to them–like this deceased Legal Aid client.

“One person who died waiting was Dexter E. Penny of District Heights, Md., who applied for disability benefits in February 2009 after being diagnosed with colon cancer,” the article said. “His initial application was denied. Then his first appeal was denied on the grounds that he didn’t provide enough medical records.

“Mr. Penny, a mason, approached the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau for help a year after his first application. He couldn’t understand why terminal cancer wouldn’t qualify him for benefits, says his sister, Diane Penny.

“Kate Lang, his lawyer, called four hospitals seeking additional records. Mr. Penny’s condition worsened. By September 2010, he was told he had stage-four cancer. Mr. Penny, 50 years old, was nearly broke and dying in the hospital and the agency wanted more accurate documentation to determine whether he was able to work, according to his sister.

“On Dec. 15, 2010, the agency informed him by letter that he had been granted benefits. Mr. Penny had died nine days earlier. The letter arrived the day of his funeral. On Jan. 31, the government sent him another letter saying his benefits had been revoked because he hadn’t responded to the agency’s questions in a timely manner.”

Social workers team up with Legal Aid lawyers

When clients come to Maryland Legal Aid, they’re often desperate. In addition to a pressing legal problem, they’re grappling with other issues that drive their lives into a crisis — no money, no housing or no medical care. Sometimes all of the above.

You could say they need a social worker almost as badly as a lawyer.

And you’d be right.

That’s why Legal Aid and the University of Maryland School of Social Work created a program that integrates first-year graduate social work students into the nonprofit law firm’s practice in downtown Baltimore.

“Clients come to us with a host of problems — the presenting legal problem, plus community-based needs,” said Cornelia Bright Gordon, chief attorney of Legal Aid’s administrative law and intake units. “For example, many people have barriers, such as mental health issues, that may interfere with the success of the legal problem. They need access to services to make the legal work stick.

“Since Legal Aid is the law firm of last resort, our clients are in true crisis,” Bright Gordon said. “They come in with threats of immediate eviction, no money or food in the house, and some are desperately ill, with no access to medical services and no insurance.”

The three-year-old project helps stabilize clients and bring their lives back to a state of equilibrium. “It’s a collaborative process between a lawyer and a trained social worker with hands-on, clinical therapeutic experience who is supervising four interns,” she said.

To read the entire Daily Record column, click here.

Multi-service center for poor to expand in Howard

A center for helping low-income residents of Howard County will expand this summer, the Howard County Times reported yesterday. The North Laurel-Savage Multi-Service Center, which provides a wide range of human service programs, will nearly double the number of clients served when it relocates in July. Maryland Legal Aid is one of the programs that helped about 1,900 families and individuals at the center last year.  “The idea is ‘one-stop shopping’ to streamline services to reduce the number of contacts and visits to various service providers,” said Denise McCain, Legal Aid’s director of program development and compliance.  “The average client has more than one issue and generally needs a multitude of services.” To read the article, click here.

DHR secretary withdraws regulatory change targeting disabled poor

Maryland Dept. of Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald has withdrawn the planned changes to the Temporary Disability Assistance Program.  Donald, in a letter to Jeff Singer, CEO of Baltimore’s Health Care for the Homeless,  stated that the department had informed the Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review Committee earlier this month that the department was formally withdrawing the COMAR changes originally announced on Sept. 11.

“The withdrawal is welcome news for roughly 3,000 TDAP recipients who were scheduled for immediate cut-off in January, 2010, when the regulations were expected to go into effect,” said J. Peter Sabonis, assistant director of advocacy for income security at Maryland Legal Aid.  “Another 2,000 or more would have been cut off in February, 2010, as the plan’s 24 month limitation on TDAP assistance would have progressively trimmed the program’s current TDAP caseload of 18,000, 85 percent of whom receive assistance because of  ‘long-term’ disabilities.

“The move suggests that DHR, which faced an $8 million FY2010 deficit in the program, has submitted the shortfall to the governor to be included as a ‘deficiency appropriation’ for FY2010 in the FY2011 budget,” Sabonis continued.  “It does not, however, remove TDAP or any other DHR program from potential cuts in an FY2011 budget that most believe will need at least $2 billion worth of trimming–almost 15 percent of the state budget.”

Over $1 billion already has been cut in FY2010 through emergency action by the governor, treasurer and comptroller (the Board of Public Works), he added.

“State spending is now at 2007 levels,” Sabonis noted.  “DHR and DHMH, like most state agencies, were asked to submit cost-saving proposals to the governor, despite the fact that cuts to their full-time staff positions in  last nine years exceeded staff cuts of all other state agencies combined.”

Legal Aid helps victim of “patient dumping”

Maryland Legal Aid staff attorney Anne Haffner

Long Term Care Assistance Project staff attorney Anne Haffner successfully helped a Carroll County woman who was the victim of “patient dumping” after her nursing home discharged her to a hospital and then wouldn’t take her back. “The nursing home claimed that the resident was such a danger to other residents that she wasn’t entitled to a notice of involuntary discharge or a hearing,” said Haffner, noting that the client has mental health and physical issues, uses a wheelchair and is in a lot of pain. “Not taking her back was a violation of both state and federal nursing home law.”

Haffner was then able to get the Office of Health Care Quality to take another look at the woman’s case, which then levied a fine against the nursing home for multiple violations. Haffner then prepared an injunction to force the nursing home to take her back. But then the nursing home agreed to settle and the client returned to the nursing home just in time to be able to get a living-at-home waiver, which allowed her to then move into a smaller, more home-like facility. “She’s a difficult person with an anxiety disorder,” Haffner said. “She’s much happier being in an assisted living facility. We’re really happy with the outcome.”

Legal Aid sues Maryland for moving ventilator patients

Legal Aid filed a lawsuit against the state yesterday for moving low-income patients on ventilators in chronic-care hospitals to nursing homes, where they receive less-expert care.  In the complaint, Legal Aid claims the state didn’t follow legal requirements when it changed guidelines for patients’ eligibility for hospital care in order to save money–and, as a result, several patients died after they were moved to nursing homes.

“Their goal was to save money, plain and simple,” Assistant Director of Advocacy Jennifer Goldberg told The Baltimore Sun in an article in today’s paper. “Of course, everyone wants patients to get the best quality care in a setting that is appropriate and that is cost-effective,” she said. “But if it is hurting people, that’s where the problem comes in.”

To read the article, click here.

MS Patient Gets Reprieve from Nursing Home

Maryland Legal Aid staff attorney Anne Haffner

A nursing home resident with multiple sclerosis and threatened with involuntary discharge because of an outstanding bill will be allowed to stay, Baltimore’s WBAL-TV reported on Friday.  Melanie Conaway’s attorney, Maryland Legal Aid staff attorney Anne Haffner, successfully negotiated an agreement with the facility, Future Care Northpoint in Dundalk.  “We were prepared to go into a hearing and lose the hearing and be faced with a difficult decision about where Mrs. Conaway was going to be living,”  Haffner told WBAL investigative reporter Barry Simms.

But under a last-minute settlement, Conaway will remain at the nursing home.  “She said she was just so happy she would be able to stay and get her medical needs met at this nursing home,” Haffner said in the news segment. “The settlement agreement allows Mrs. Conaway to stay while we pursue a judgment against her ex-husband.”

The whole dispute focused on a $300 a month payment–alimony Conaway is supposed to receive from a divorce settlement in Tennessee. The funds are considered income and must be used for her nursing home stay, Simms reported.

Top court rejects Medicaid eligibility standard

Maryland’s highest court ruled today that Maryland’s health department used a too-strict standard in determining Medicaid eligibility for at-home health services—a victory for Legal Aid and AARP, which argued the case at the Court of Appeals.

“This is great news and  a victory for elderly and disabled people throughout the state of Maryland,” said Legal Aid senior attorney Mary Aquino, one of the attorneys who argued the case.

The decision vindicates the rights of people with dementia, who are low-income eligible and get health related services at home or in assisted living facilities, said Aquino, who represented 86-year-old Ida Brown, whose application was rejected from the Older Adults Waiver Program in 2005.

The decision could affect as many as 13,000 Marylanders who are either in the program or waiting for approval to apply.

“The court’s ruling is good for people like Mrs. Brown and her daughter, who was her caretaker for years,” said Bruce Vignery, a lawyer at the AARP Foundation Litigation, who also argued the case. “It’s great news for family members of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and older people in general.”

Brown suffers from Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, elevated cholesterol levels, hypertension, bilateral cataracts and a benign brain tumor. The state argued Brown did not require constant care from a licensed healthcare professional, its standard for admission to the program.

The Court of Appeals affirmed a decision last November by the Court of Special Appeals, which held that the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s standard was stricter than federal eligibility requirements for the program, which allows people 50 and over to get Medicaid coverage at home or in assisted-living facilities for long-term services that are normally only covered in nursing homes.

“Maryland cannot set a higher bar for eligibility under the Older Adults Waiver Program than is prescribed by the federal government,” Judge Mary Ellen Barbera wrote in the intermediate appeals court’s reported opinion last year.

Joseph DeMattos, director of AARP’s Maryland office, called the decision “a very encouraging sign. A lot of Marylanders have been suffering under these unfair standards.”

Maryland Independent profiles Southern Md. office

Maryland Legal Aid’s Southern Maryland office (Hughesville) was profiled in the Maryland Independent newspaper of Charles County in a story about Charles Weeks, a Nanjemoy man severely injured in a car accident three years ago and burdened with medical bills. After losing a court fight with a collection agency, he went to Legal Aid, which took his case.

“That’s when Jake Ouslander [above] entered the picture,” the article said. “Jake Ouslander is a young attorney, relatively fresh out of law school. At the University of Michigan School of Law, he worked extensively with the school’s clinical law program and found he had an interest in helping those who are unable to navigate the judicial system and advocate for themselves. Weeks’ was one of his first cases. The first thing he did was to review all of the materials connected with the case and the audio tapes of the district court hearing. He believed that there was basis for appeal and he agreed to take the case.

“He submitted a brief to the circuit court and to opposing counsel and requested an oral argument. A few weeks after the oral argument, the decision came down from the higher court: the lower court’s ruling had been reversed. Unless something unforeseen occurs, that’s one less thing Weeks has to worry about. He can begin to ponder his future.”