The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) must approve any regulation before it is published in the Federal Register. It has been quite some time since Social Security submitted proposed final regulations to OMB "to clarify that the agency is responsible for setting the time and place for a hearing before an administrative law judge." OMB has finally cleared the final regulations. The OMB website indicates that the completed action was "consistent with change." Social Security should publish these final regulations in the Federal Register in the near future. We will have to wait until then to find out what they say.
Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) have been concerned about the proposed regulations since they believe they will take away any control they have over their dockets. Social Security wants the regulations in order to force low producing ALJs to hold more hearings and generally to force ALJs to hold more hearings.
I sympathize with Social Security's desire to do something about extreme low producing ALJs. Many of the extreme low producers ought to find other employment or retire. However, I do not favor an effort to speed up ALJs generally. In fact, I think they are already trying to hear and decide too many cases. In my opinion, the process has already deteriorated significantly.
I am concerned that Social Security management has unrealistic expectations about the number of cases that an ALJ can hear and decide each month. Social Security disability cases, if reduced to current value, are worth about $400,000 each -- without considering the value of Medicare. If an ALJ is hearing 50 cases a month, he or she is ruling on $20 million of benefits a month or almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year. How much do we really want to speed up people who bear such a heavy responsibility?
I am also concerned that low producing ALJs will find it easy to circumvent Social Security's plans to schedule hearings for them by continuing hearings at the last minute. That will not be good for anyone.
Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) have been concerned about the proposed regulations since they believe they will take away any control they have over their dockets. Social Security wants the regulations in order to force low producing ALJs to hold more hearings and generally to force ALJs to hold more hearings.
I sympathize with Social Security's desire to do something about extreme low producing ALJs. Many of the extreme low producers ought to find other employment or retire. However, I do not favor an effort to speed up ALJs generally. In fact, I think they are already trying to hear and decide too many cases. In my opinion, the process has already deteriorated significantly.
I am concerned that Social Security management has unrealistic expectations about the number of cases that an ALJ can hear and decide each month. Social Security disability cases, if reduced to current value, are worth about $400,000 each -- without considering the value of Medicare. If an ALJ is hearing 50 cases a month, he or she is ruling on $20 million of benefits a month or almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year. How much do we really want to speed up people who bear such a heavy responsibility?
I am also concerned that low producing ALJs will find it easy to circumvent Social Security's plans to schedule hearings for them by continuing hearings at the last minute. That will not be good for anyone.
I wonder if this will have the opposite effect on some of the ALJs in my areas who believe in the rocket dockets, who schedule 10-15 hearings in one morning and take 5-10 minutes each (and grant almost every one, too). I'd hate to see those dockets disappear.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is that ALJs will ultimately become case processors with no real authority, no real independence, and no control over caseload. Today, they are compelled to hear a set number of cases; tomorrow, they are limited to paying 60 percent or 50 percent of those cases; oh, and Senator XX wants this case paid as a favor, so make sure it is aid. Claimants won't need representatives-they'll need political influence.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a certain amount of time to read the evidence in a disability case, analyze it, conduct a meaningful hearing, decide the case, & edit and sign the decision. Generally, that runs about 3 to 4 hours per case. Trying to impose arbitrary numbers on ALJs inevitably results in "paying down the backlog" because it is much quicker to pay a case -- no one is going to review it, so the decision does not even have to be grammatical much less legally sound.
ReplyDeleteWould an ALJ who did not hold the centrally scheduled cases (i.e., did not make the production numbers) be disciplined for insubordination?
Would any of us want to appear as a defendant in a criminal case before a Judge who was told he/she had to hear and decide a certain number of cases per month? Think about it --it just might be you who was found guilty because the Judge didn't have time to hear all the evidence. Such a system in traffic court or civil tort cases wouldn't be much better, either.
Anon 3, your examples are exactly right, but a more apt analogy is that the criminal court judge would find not guilty the criminal who attacked you -- no review of a not guilty judgment just as there is no review of all the favorables ALJs put out now to meet their quotas. Someday, the cumulative effect of all these questionable favorables will cause congress to take some action that will harm the truly disabled
ReplyDelete