Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has just issued a report on the differences between disability determinations made at the initial and reconsideration levels by the Disability Determination Services (DDS) and by Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) at the hearing levels. This study is going to attract a lot of attention. It is worth reading in its entirety but let me pull out three tables to give you an idea of what is in the report. Click twice on each thumbnail to view full size.
3 comments:
An equally or more interesting chart would be those based on sex and race at the alj level. But i'm sure they would not produce those findings.
These tables leave something to be desired. For example, it would be useful to acknowledge explicitly that the ALJ allowances come from a subset of the DDS denials. Without this information, the busy reader may think that ALJs allowed a very high percentage of DDS denials for some impairments. Rather, only a limited number of denials were appealed. We would expect self-selection to play a role, leading to only claimants who are most likely to be disabled to appeal. Of these few who appealed, for some specific impairments, many were found disabled. These charts do not communicate this effectively.
Anonymous #2 is correct; for example, an 80% allowance rate by ALJs is only for those cases denied by DDS who appealed all the way to a hearing and actually came to the hearing. Another major factor is the passage of time before hearing decisions are made, with the additional medical evidence then available.
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