Aug 8, 2008

Sort Of Saying One Thing, While Meaning Another

Take a look at this memo from Social Security's Office of Disability Policy (ODP) in answer to the question, "Whether an individual with a below-knee amputation and no indication of stump complications, who does not use a prosthesis due to inability to afford one, can be found disabled." The memo was obtained by the National Association of Disability Exmainers (NADE). It sounds like a simple question that ought to have a simple answer.

Social Security's answer to the question, however, rambles on. While the memo suggests that the answer is "Yes", the memo mostly discusses various way in which an individual in the situation described could be denied and never says how such an individual could be approved. The overall impression I get from the memo is that the answer is actually "No, we want you to deny those folks, but you can't quote us on that."

Actually, it does not matter what the memo says. The real policy will never be in writing in a memo. Actually saying what the policy is might be embarrassing. NADE members will intuit the true answer from the tone of the memo and from the cases they see returned to them by Social Security's Quality Assurance process. Those Quality Assurance returns are hidden away in individual claimant files and cannot be released to the public, allowing Social Security to hide its true policy from public scrutiny.

If you are on the outside of Social Security wondering why so many disability claims get denied, study this and think about it. It is a microcosm of disability policy at Social Security. The policy documents released to the public are always hazy and hard to understand, but do not sound too unreasonable, while the actual results on the ground do not seem to match up with what the policy documents seem to say.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First, why not remove the names? Come on. NADE should know better.

Second, the law ( the listings ) allow a provision to deny for failure and it used to happen. May still, but would be rare.

Third. These folks make 100 K a year to diddle such issues - Balrimore Woodlawn policy buracrats - really one has been with the agency for 30 years, which is why you should remove the names, but that is the problem.

We have folks waiting for a hearing for years and we are paying these jerks big bucks to comment on something that should be self evident. SSA is bloated with folks who log into their modules each morning with a querry from some fool who is totally unfamiliar with the reality of human beings applying for disablity wanting to talk "policy" - my god. Time for a real housecleaning.

Astrue has said more than once that this kind of policy self stim needs to go.