I'm going to give you two words. And I will buy you lunch if you can tell me what connection they have with Social Security.

Here are the words: Pneumoconiosis and Prouty. I bring these words up because I got a "blast from the past" when I was writing last week's column about Social Security "beneficiary identification codes," or BIC codes, as the Social Security Administration calls them. They are the little letter symbols you find behind your Social Security number (or a family member's SSN) when you get any correspondence from the SSA. They indicate the kind of Social Security benefit you are getting. The most common BIC code is "A" and that stands for retirement benefits. Another example: your Social Security claim number might be your husband's SSN with a letter "D" behind it. And that means you are getting widow's benefits off of his record.

There are about a hundred other BIC codes — and two of them took me on a little trip down memory lane. One of them is "J" and the other is "LM." "J" stands for Prouty benefits. And "LM" stands for Miner's benefits. I am almost positive you have never heard of those in connection with Social Security. And for good reason. They pretty much don't exist anymore. But when I started working for the SSA in 1973, those benefits were still around and were part of my everyday life as a new Social Security rep.

First, the story of Prouty benefits. In a nutshell, Prouty benefits were set up in the 1960s to pay a small monthly stipend to people who were too old to have had a chance to work and pay enough taxes into the Social Security system to become insured for regular Social Security benefits. The sponsor of the legislation was Senator Winston Prouty of Vermont.

I have no idea if this story was true or not. but back in my early days of working for the Social Security Administration, when Prouty benefits were still being routinely awarded, the word being spread from one SSA rep to another was that Senator Prouty had parents who didn't qualify for regular Social Security, so he crafted this legislation to help out mom and dad — and eventually, hundreds of thousands of others.

I don't recall all of the rules. But I believe a Prouty beneficiary with no Social Security work history had to be age 72 before 1968 in order to qualify for a monthly check that I think was less than $100. That age designation is why they were also known as "Special Age 72" benefits.

There were also other rules for people who had some Social Security-covered work, but not enough to qualify for regular Social Security benefits. Or they might have had enough work to get a very small Social Security check. But if the Prouty rules paid them more money, they would get a Prouty benefit instead of their regular Social Security check. But no matter what their situation, the rules were always tied to the attainment of age 72 before 1968.

Because almost all the people who were eligible for these benefits were born before 1896, it is highly unlikely there are any Prouty beneficiaries still alive today. So I'm sure that all "J" BIC codes are now just historical footnotes.

So now what about that "LM" BIC code that stands for Miner's benefits? Do coal miners qualify for special Social Security benefits? Well, no, not really. But they do qualify for Black Lung benefits authorized by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.

Back in the 1970s, when I started working for the Social Security Administration, the agency was charged with the responsibility for taking and adjudicating claims for Black Lung benefits. But those benefits were not paid out of the Social Security trust funds. They were separately funded through the Department of Labor. And sometime in the 1990s, the entire workload was transferred to the Department of Labor.

But that meant that in the 1970s and 1980s, in some areas, especially in coal mining regions, the local Social Security office could be as much a Black Lung office as it was a Social Security office.

At the time, I was working in a small town in central Illinois. And there were more than a few coal mines in the area. So we had more than our share of retired coal miners coming into the office to file for Black Lung benefits.

And you could always tell these guys (and they were always guys) as soon as they entered the office and walked up to the reception desk. They were kind of old and grizzled men who seemed to be worn down by a life in underground coal mines. I may be misremembering this, but I believe the pores on their faces were always speckled with black dust. And they were usually coughing up black gunk into handkerchiefs that they always carried. Anyway, I just remember feeling so sorry for them as they sat across from my desk while I filled out their Black Lung forms.

(If you want to learn how awful Black Lung disease can be, just do a Google search for it. Or you can use the medical term for the disease — "pneumoconiosis." )

By the way, you shouldn't think miners were or still are getting rich off this program. I don't know how Congress came up with this, but they set the payment rate to a miner with black lung disease at an amount equal to 37.5% of the monthly salary paid to a GS-2 federal worker — essentially the lowest-paid government employees. (Today, that comes out to about $800 per month.)

I have just a bit of space left in this column, so I am going to briefly mention one more of the BIC codes I wrote about in last week's column. And that is a "D6," which is listed as a "surviving divorced wife." It's that term that always intrigued me. I call the women getting D6 benefits "divorced widows." But a lawyer once told me that a divorced woman whose ex-husband has died cannot legally be referred to as his "widow." (I'm not really sure why.) So they came up with the "surviving divorced wife" term. I just found that interesting.

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called "Social Security — Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security." The other is "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts." You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. Or you can send him an email at [email protected]. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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