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Equifax Data Breach: Were You Affected?

Sep 5, 2019

In September 2017 Equifax, the consumer credit reporting agency, admitted that it had suffered a cyber-security breach of its system which had compromised the personal data of some 147 million customers in the United States alone. That translates to roughly 1 in 3...

The Maryland Employment Network is Hiring!!

Aug 23, 2019

The Maryland Employment Network is Hiring!! The Maryland Employment Network is an Employment Network through the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work Program. MD-EN provides services to Marylanders with disabilities to assist them with meeting their career...

This Week in History: Social Security Act Signed into Law

Aug 16, 2019

It was in June 1934 as part of his New Deal that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created by executive order a Committee for Economic Security (CES) which was to study the issue of economic instability and make recommendations upon those findings. Six months later the...

HUD Now Exempts ABLE Accounts

May 15, 2019

In a notice issued earlier this month the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, better known as HUD, formally recognized the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act and will now disregard the amounts in beneficiaries' ABLE accounts when determining...

April is National Social Security Month!

Apr 12, 2019

T.S Eliot famously set off on his epic poem“The Waste Land” by declaring it the cruelest month but April has an additional identity as National Social Security Month, even if the notion is still to catch on at a truly national scale. There is certainly little evidence...

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Working Works: It’s Still National Disability Employment Awareness Month

One would like to imagine that it was a failing of this writer's observational powers rather than the lack of promotional ability of the organizers that, but for a fruitless quest for HP sauce* at a local Wegman’s I would not have known that this rapidly diminishing...

COLAs for 2027 Announced!

Social Security published its 2027 Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) earlier this week. As is almost invariably the case monthly benefit payments will be higher, this year to the tune of 3.6%. For SSI recipients it means that the Federal Benefit Rate (FBR) will rise...

Goodnight, Virginia: SSA Closes VCU’s National Training Center

It was announced last Monday that the WIPA National Training and Data Center, would be shut down with immediate effect. The NTC, which was under the auspices of Virginia Commonwealth University, has been a primary source of training, education and support of Work...

In Exile: Impending Medicaid Eligibility Denials for Non-Citizens

Emma Lazarus’ 1883 sonnet ‘The New Colossus’ was written in the same year that she established in New York the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews; an organization designed to provide aid to refugees escaping antisemitic violence and...

Education Matters: Maintaining Child’s Benefits at 18

Much to the dismay of students and teachers, another summer vacation has come and gone and one must again spend those long hours in the classroom looking wistfully out of the window as someone whitters on about some nonsense or other. For a small but significant...

In The Loop: SSA Changes Policy on Re-routing Calls

As anyone who has been obliged to call Social Security knows, the wait time has been prohibitively long. In the last year of the Biden administration the average wait was 60 minutes, which was bad enough, but in 2025 under the present regime that had increased to a...

An August Occasion: Celebrating National ABLE Savings Day

This year August 14 marks, amongst other notable events, the 236th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Väräla which brought about an end to the Russo-Swedish War; exactly 124 years later the arrival of British Expeditionary Force in France saw the beginning of...

Priority Treatment: SSA Adds to the Compassionate Allowance List

A fresh press release from Social Security will provide some good news to potential beneficiaries who experience a range of disabilities. Fourteen relatively obscure conditions have been added to the agency’s Compassionate Allowance policy. The policy allows Social...

Won’t Get Food Again: SNAP Eligibility in Decline

Recent articles in The Atlantic and by NPR have highlighted the growing concern in the reduction in the number of food stamp beneficiaries over the past year. The current figure, as estimated by the Department of Agriculture, stands at around 37 million recipients,...

Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Social Security Adds New Features to MySSA Accounts

A recent press release from Social Security looked to encourage applicants who have found themselves having to appeal a denial to use a My Social Security account when working through that process. Evidently very keen on getting you on board, the agency has produced a...