Social Security Administration

When Kathleen Runner received an official-looking letter telling her it was important to register her newborn daughter with the Social Security Administration, she mailed in the $15 the letter requested. Runner, 21, of Levittown, knew she needed to register her daughter, Courtney, but, she said, "I had no idea the service was free. " John McBeath, district manager of the county's regional office of the Social Security Administration in Bristol Township, said Runner was the victim of a scam that uses deceptive wording to mislead people into paying for a service that is free - and just a phone call away.

Ten months after her husband died of cancer, Karen Capato of North Jersey chose to have his children. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia ruled that Capato's twin boys, conceived by artificial insemination, were entitled to Social Security survivor benefits. "This is, indeed, a new world," the three-judge panel wrote in Wednesday's decision. The boys, now 7, were conceived with sperm that their father, sick with metastasized esophageal cancer, deposited with a sperm bank about three months before his death in 2002.

A monthly ritual - the mass mailing of Social Security checks - is about to change. Starting May 1, anyone newly applying for Social Security benefits will be assigned one of three monthly payment dates. All benefits now are paid on the third of the month. The new system, which will be officially announced today, is designed to help the Social Security Administration begin preparing for the retirement of the baby boom generation. Because boomers are so numerous, the Social Security population is projected to swell from 50 million people to 76 million by 2020.

Not every child is born with a silver spoon, but beginning Sunday, every newborn in the Philadelphia area can at least have his or her own Social Security number. Federal and state officials yesterday announced that, beginning Jan. 1, new mothers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and 23 other states will have the option of ordering their child a Social Security number when they fill out the baby's birth certificate. If this seems like the federal government is literally tracking the individual from cradle to grave, officials hope new parents will see the option as a convenience: a way to avoid some postpartum paper work.

Charlotte Ann Conaway was described by those who knew her as a "social butterfly. " That was because she had a passion for entertaining and treating friends and family with her gourmet cooking skills. Besides party guests, Char, as she was called by family and friends, favored a great-nephew, Zachary Tyler Coates, with her special homemade pound cake every birthday. "Her love of baking could be tasted in every bite of her original delicacies," her family said. Charlotte Conaway, a 28-year employee of the Social Security Administration and a devoted churchwoman, died June 26 after a lengthy illness.

A former patient accused Ancora Psychiatric Hospital officials in a lawsuit filed yesterday of misappropriating her Social Security benefits. Martha Patricia Hance of Vineland said in the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Camden that the hospital improperly took her money and used it to pay her hospital bills at Ancora. Even though an Ancora physician found that Hance was capable of handling her financial affairs, the suit said, the hospital applied to the federal Social Security Administration to become her "representative payee" - meaning that Hance's benefits would go to the hospital, which would administer them on her behalf.

Would you like to make sure you get every penny due you from Social Security when you retire, or if you become disabled? And assure that your spouse and children will get the maximum Social Security benefits if you die? Of course you would. The first step is to check your Social Security earnings record - now - to make sure the maximum possible earnings have been credited toward your Social Security. The penalty for not checking could be the loss of hundreds of dollars in benefits payments later on. To be sure, the chance of losing a really large amount of money is slim.

Congress is moving to knock down barriers that bar the IRS and Social Security Administration from sharing information that could help law enforcement identify illegal immigrants and the businesses that employ them. The two agencies routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records, and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them. But the agencies don't analyze their data to sift out likely immigration fraud - and, citing privacy rules, they won't share their millions of records so that law enforcement agencies could do that either.

Retiring on Social Security benefits is as common as growing old. But if chronic illness or disability forces you off the job and onto the Social Security disability rolls, you could be dead before you see your first check. The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee is investigating reports that the Social Security Administration is so slow in processing claims from the disabled that many of those qualified for benefits are forced to seek welfare, lose homes and property, and go without medical care.

Jean L. Walker lived with Rufus Heck for more than 30 years. She raised their two children with him. And she stood by his bedside daily for three years before he succumbed to illness in 1987 at 73. Now, Walker, 61, of Oxford, Chester County, has sued Heck's former employer, Lukens Steel Co. in Coatesville, seeking Heck's pension fund death benefits. Lukens contends Walker is not entitled to them because the two were never married. In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Common Pleas Court in Chester County, Walker maintained that she and Heck were bound by a common-law marriage.

Charlotte Ann Conaway was described by those who knew her as a "social butterfly. " That was because she had a passion for entertaining and treating friends and family with her gourmet cooking skills. Besides party guests, Char, as she was called by family and friends, favored a great-nephew, Zachary Tyler Coates, with her special homemade pound cake every birthday. "Her love of baking could be tasted in every bite of her original delicacies," her family said. Charlotte Conaway, a 28-year employee of the Social Security Administration and a devoted churchwoman, died June 26 after a lengthy illness.

By Theodore R. Marmor and Jerry L. Mashaw An old adage says that every problem has an obvious solution that is both simple and wrong. We fear this applies to the idea of increasing the formal retirement age for Social Security. The widespread assumption is that the long-term financial health of the Social Security Administration requires raising the age of eligibility for full retirement benefits. This seems obvious for a few reasons. First, although Social Security today has a huge surplus, projections suggest a shortfall in two decades unless something is done to shore up its finances.

Ten months after her husband died of cancer, Karen Capato of North Jersey chose to have his children. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia ruled that Capato's twin boys, conceived by artificial insemination, were entitled to Social Security survivor benefits. "This is, indeed, a new world," the three-judge panel wrote in Wednesday's decision. The boys, now 7, were conceived with sperm that their father, sick with metastasized esophageal cancer, deposited with a sperm bank about three months before his death in 2002.

Edwin G. Abel Jr., 75, of Wallingford, a former Social Security Administration executive, died of sepsis Friday, May 28, at Wallingford Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Abel earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Western Maryland College in 1960 after training pilots at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii during his military service from 1953 to 1957. Mr. Abel began his career with Social Security in 1960 as a claims representative trainee in Baltimore. He became branch manager in Bennettsville, S.C., in 1968, when the South Carolina Jaycees named him its outstanding young man of the year, his son Ted said.

Congress is moving to knock down barriers that bar the IRS and Social Security Administration from sharing information that could help law enforcement identify illegal immigrants and the businesses that employ them. The two agencies routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records, and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them. But the agencies don't analyze their data to sift out likely immigration fraud - and, citing privacy rules, they won't share their millions of records so that law enforcement agencies could do that either.

Two federal agencies keep to themselves a mountain of evidence that investigators could use to indict the nation's burgeoning workforce of illegal immigrants and the firms that employ them. Last week, immigration agents trumpeted the arrests of 1,187 illegal workers in a massive sting on a single company, but they acknowledge that they relied on old-fashioned confidential informants and an unsolicited tip to get their investigation going. It didn't have to be that hard. The IRS and the Social Security Administration routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records, and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them.

In some plans for revamping Social Security, there's a call to make the system mandatory. You're forgiven if you thought it already was. Roughly 4 percent of American workers - as many as six million - are outside the system. And most of them have no desire to get in. The vast majority are state and local employees, including members of police and fire departments in Philadelphia and throughout the country. Most state and municipal workers in most places, Pennsylvania and New Jersey included, are enrolled in Social Security.

Americans are living longer, which is among the main reasons that Social Security has long-term financial woes. So why hasn't there been more talk in Washington about the one change that would address the situation head-on - raising the retirement age? For the answer, look at the polls. They indicate that a later retirement age is the public's least favorite remedy for Social Security, less popular even than higher payroll tax rates. "Have you ever seen a 63-year-old garbage collector, a 68-year-old nurse or a 70-year-old construction worker?"

IT IS CLEAR that the big winners of President Bush's privatization plan will be Wall Street investment bankers. It is also clear that the big losers will be women. Women, particularly women of color, earn less over their working lives, thanks to discrimination and interruptions in their work histories caused by caring for children and for ill and elderly relatives. Many women will be at substantial risk if their small investments are subject to market forces. In its state-by-state analysis of the impact of Social Security reform on women, the National Women's Law Center reports that, in Pennsylvania, 26 percent of women and 21 percent of men receive Social Security benefits, and that without Social Security, 58 percent of the elderly women in Pennsylvania would be poor.

Alas, the debate on Social Security reform is not going well for George W. Bush. Recent news stories say some Republicans are having second thoughts about the political wisdom of tackling the issue. Some Republican analysts are now pronouncing Social Security reform as a political guillotine for the GOP, much as Hillary Clinton health care politically decapitated Democratic House and Senate members in the mid-1990s. But that analysis is wrong. Social Security reform can be an enormous vote-getter for Republicans and Democrats alike if they will unite behind a marketable plan, such as the one proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.)