Here is another small nugget from Commissioner Astrue's September 13 letter. He says that one initiative he has to work down "aged" cases, that is claims that have been awaiting a hearing for a long time, is to implement a "quality assurance program." He gives no explanation of what he means.
I do not know what this would mean other than some process by which decisions of Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) are reviewed for "quality" with some action being taken about those that do not exhibit sufficient "quality." The problem is that no one knows what "quality" is when we are talking about ALJ decisions. There is no gold standard. This might permit a Social Security Commissioner to rachet up or down the percentage of claims that are approved by ALJs whenever desired. This is essentially the situation with the "quality assurance" program at the initial and reconsideration levels of review. This is the sort of thing that Social Security Commissioners have desired for a long time. They have long felt that the ALJs are far too independent and need to be brought under some sort of control.
I do not know what this would mean other than some process by which decisions of Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) are reviewed for "quality" with some action being taken about those that do not exhibit sufficient "quality." The problem is that no one knows what "quality" is when we are talking about ALJ decisions. There is no gold standard. This might permit a Social Security Commissioner to rachet up or down the percentage of claims that are approved by ALJs whenever desired. This is essentially the situation with the "quality assurance" program at the initial and reconsideration levels of review. This is the sort of thing that Social Security Commissioners have desired for a long time. They have long felt that the ALJs are far too independent and need to be brought under some sort of control.
5 comments:
Yes, this could be a concern. But frankly, given the totality of this 14 page letter, the chances that Astrue or any other COSS is going to have the resources to implement any serious quality assurance program at the hearing level are de minimus. As this rather frank letter indicates, Astrue will be very lucky to keep the backlog where it is over the next couple of years, much less significantly lower it.
SSA hates ODAR ALJs.
Ya Think? Of course "SSA" hates ALJs. They have since time immemorial, back when ALJs were called hearing examiners. ALJs don't always agree with "SSA's" prior determination so of course they 'hate' them. It's the nature of the beast.
Wait a minute, "ALJs don't always agree with SSA's prior determions so of course they 'hate' them. It's the nature of the beast." There's alot to be said in this statement. If ALJ's don't agree with the prior determination and they have legally sufficient rationale for that disagreement I don't think there would be a problem. The disability process is inherently a system of checks and balances. The problem is the ALJ's reasons for not agreeing with "prior determinations" is, a majority of the time, not based on legally sufficient rationale, it's based on many other factors of which I will not go into here save one -laziness! My two cents.
Laziness? Sure, there's always some of that around in a large bureaucracy. But remember, "legally sufficient" is often--if not always--in the eye of the beholder. The phrase means virtually nothing...or absolutely everything, to say the same thing in reverse.
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