Proposed Procedural Regs

The Social Security Administration just filed this set of proposed amendments to its regulations with the Office of Management and Budget:

We propose to amend several regulations and provide new regulatory language to address inefficiencies in the hearings process. The amendments include provisions clarifying that claims denied by state Disability Determination Services and other adjudicators for “failure to cooperate” are technical denials rather than medical determinations, and providing flexibility in setting the time and place of hearings. We also intend to propose new regulatory provisions that will allow ALJs to dismiss a request for a hearing where a claimant has abandoned his or her claim and to specify regulatory standards that require ALJs to clearly articulate their rationale when issuing decisions on remanded claims.

OMB must approve the proposed regulations before Social Security can publish them in the Federal Register. Probably, this proposal would allow an ALJ to dismiss a request for hearing if the attorney shows up but not the claimant. Would this proposal mean that "failure to cooperate" denials could not be appealed? What does "flexibility in setting the time and place of hearings" mean? Also, I thought Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) were already supposed to "clearly articulate" their rationales. How does adopting a regulation saying that change the situation?