There are many steps in the process by which a federal agency adopts new regulations. One crucial step is obtaining the approval of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the White House. Social Security just requested OMB approval of the following:
We propose to revise the procedures for how claimants who request hearings before administrative law judges (ALJs) may appeal their fully favorable revised determinations based on prehearing case reviews or fully favorable attorney advisor decisions. We also propose to notify claimants who receive partially favorable determinations based on prehearing case reviews that we will still hold the requested ALJ hearing unless all parties to the hearing tell us in writing that we should dismiss the hearing requests. We expect that these changes will lessen the confusion claimants may experience in these processes and free scarce administrative resources that we can better use to reduce the hearings level case backlog.
3 comments:
SSA could make it even simpler by eliminating any mention of appeal from any fully favorable decsionl. It makes no sense to confuse them. In federal and staae courts the winning party has no appeal right. If the decison is really fully favorable, there's no aggrieved party.
Doing that would allow SSA to stop paying so many overpaid employees and save that money for the paying of benefits!!
Charles, how about some info on the transfer from Pennsylvania to NY DDS's of initial disability claims processing. Virtually all Northern PA border counties will be sending their cases to NY State. Unknown if hearings on denials of those cases will remain in NY or be shipped back to PA. If PA needs help from NY, things are going downhill fast. Wonder how PA attorney reps will be reacting to that.
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