From The NOSSCR Conference -- Nancy Shor

I attended the conference of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) in Baltimore last week. Typically, these conferences run from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday morning. Except for Thursday morning, the conferences have three different continuing legal education sessions going on in separate rooms at any given time. On Thursday morning the whole group meets in one room to hear speakers of more general interest. This was a very large room indeed in Baltimore, since there were over 1,100 people at this conference. For most people who attend, Thursday morning is the highlight of the conference.

The first speaker on Thursday morning was Nancy Shor, the executive director of NOSSCR. Here are some of the points she covered and a few of my comments in brackets:

• Commissioner Astrue will speak at the next NOSSCR Conference in St. Louis in October 2007.
• Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) plans to detail 5% of all Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) to Falls Church, VA, the headquarters of ODAR, to do video hearings to help clear Social Security's hearing backlog. [Why do they have to go to Falls Church? Why not avoid the extra expense of sending them to Falls Church, by letting them do this from the comfort of their own hearing offices?]
• Social Security plans to offer retired ALJs the opportunity to hold hearings to work on the backlog -- but only in Falls Church. [There seems to be a pattern here. Does someone like the idea of having all ALJs located in just one or a few offices where they can be carefully controlled -- sort of like what happened with Medicare ALJs?]
• The Columbus, OH ODAR office is refusing to process any requests for cases to be approved without a hearing -- on the record reversal is the term of art for these. [That will really help with the backlogs!]
• The no-show rate for ALJ hearings is 30%. This drives a lot of people in ODAR nuts. [I cannot blame them for being upset. No solution is likely, however.]
• Commissioner Astrue is not interested in plans that will take long. He is aware that he has only a limited time as Commissioner and that there is pressure from Congress on Social Security's backlogs.
• Shor thinks that the Federal Reviewing Officers (FedROs) currently being used in a trial of the Disability Service Improvement plan in the Boston region are not likely to be around much longer. She thinks it likely that at some point soon they will be told to finish off the cases they have already, but that no new cases will be sent to them. [So what happens to all these FedROs?]
• Commissioner Astrue has told Shor that he is thinking of ending the Disability Review Board (DRB). She thinks that the name DRB may live on as the new name for the Appeals Council. [Do Appeals Council employees want to say they work at DRB -- pronounced "drab?" ODAR is bad enough. Do not burden Social Security employees with working for "drab!" There is no need to give former Commissioner Barnhart such a silly fig leaf.]
• Shor thinks that some or all of the limitations on submission of evidence contained in the DSI plan may be adopted nationwide. [Note to ALJs and others who think this is a wonderful idea. Adopting this solves nothing. It just allows a few "outlier" ALJs (as another speaker at the NOSSCR Conference called them) to engage in oppressive behavior. A longer notice of hearing would be far more effective. If you have not tried to get medical records out of doctors and hospitals, you do not get it. The problem is much more with medical providers than with attorneys.]
• Commissioner Astrue told Shor in a recent meeting that there were a lot of regulations in Social Security's pipeline which would be coming out soon. When she asked him if this included the proposed regulations that would increase each of the age categories in Social Security's regulations by two years [which does not sound like that big a deal but which would have a devastating effect upon Social Security claimants], he said simply "No." [But will he withdraw those proposed regulations? As long as that proposal is out there, it could be adopted with no advance warning.]
• Shor described her recent meeting with Astrue as mostly a monologue by Astrue. [If you have been reading this blog regularly, that should not come as much of a surprise.