"Bureaucratic water torture"

Also: How the Dobbs decision is playing out in Mass., one year later [Donate ❤️]( [View in Browser](  June 27, 2023 Hi CommonHealth reader, Not long ago, I got an email from a former employee of the Social Security Administration alerting me to a mysterious trend. The agency administers a program that gives money to people who are extremely poor, and elderly or disabled — including about a million children. It's called Supplemental Security Income, or SSI. And it's known for lifting about half of its child beneficiaries out of poverty. But over the past decade, the number of kids getting this help has plummeted: Enrollment has dropped by about 20%, and the number of applications is down 50%. The big question is why. When I started talking to people about SSI, I heard a lot of frustration. Boston resident Alicia Thomas has spent years navigating the system on behalf of her son, and she's struggled with a number of errors on the part of SSI staff. Once, she said they scanned her documents into their system on the wrong side, so it was just a bunch of blank pages. She compared the agency’s system to a washing machine. “You put two socks in, but you never find them both,” she said. It turns out this is common. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has heard so many complaints about the SSI system that he has a term for it: “bureaucratic water torture.” Even the agency acknowledges there are issues, which it blames on a lack of support from lawmakers. “We are focused on addressing our challenges,” a spokesperson said in a statement to me. “For over a decade SSA received insufficient funding from Congress to administer its programs.” The lack of money has translated to a precipitous drop in staff. That means it’s been hard to get an appointment to apply for SSI. And you can only apply for a kid with the help of a staff member. So, it seemed like a somewhat familiar story of funding issues in Washington, D.C. squeezing a safety net program. But as I kept digging, it turned out to be more complicated. It’s not just harder to enter the program, it’s also more likely that people receiving SSI will be shown the exit. Often people are removed from SSI through a process called "continuing disability reviews." This is when SSI checks to see if a recipient still qualifies for the program. David Wittenburg, a senior fellow at the social policy research analytics group Mathematica, said sometimes it makes sense to remove someone from SSI. But sometimes, he said, it happens because of a mistake. “If you submit the wrong paperwork or if you don't file on time, you lose benefits,” he said. Wittenburg explained that, historically, there was very little funding to do these checks. But starting in 2015, Congress made sure this piece of SSI was well funded — even as money fell for helping people enroll in the program. “One of the things you have happening is you have a greater number of exits,” he said. “And that's not something that's been really talked about.” Plus, researchers have found the consequences can be serious, including a striking increase in crime for young adults removed from the SSI program. [Click here to read my full story]( on the situation. P.S.— A reminder that we will be off next week because of the Fourth of July holiday. Enjoy Independence Day! Gabrielle Emanuel Health reporter [Follow]( Support the news  This Week's Must Reads [Mass. set a record for opioid overdose deaths. Black residents were hardest hit]( Massachusetts has set another record one no one will celebrate. Preliminary state data shows there were 2,357 overdose deaths in 2022. That’s a 2.5% increase over 2021 and the third straight year of rising fatalities. 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The latest neuroscience can help parents help their kids manage behavior. [Read more.]( 🧠💥 Did you know...💥🧠 ...flies age more quickly after they[witness the death of a fellow fly](. According to some morbid new research, the "marked" flies are also avoided by other flies and die sooner. But when scientists shut off key neurons, this traumatic event does nothing to the fly's lifespan. 😎 Forward to a friend. They can sign up [here](. 📣 Give us your feedback: newsletters@wbur.org 📧 Get more WBUR stories sent to your inbox. [Check out all of our newsletter offerings.]( Support the news     Want to change how you receive these emails? Stop getting this newsletter by [updating your preferences.](  I don't want to hear from WBUR anymore. Unsubscribe from all WBUR editorial newsletters [here.](  Interested in learning more about corporate sponsorship? [Click here.]( Copyright © 2023 WBUR-FM, All rights reserved.