Sen. Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he planned to investigate high award rates by some Social Security administrative law judges following a front-page article on government disability benefits in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.
“An already broke Social Security disability program is being further threatened by a system that appears to be overly generous in giving out benefits to those who might not deserve them,” Mr. Hatch said in a statement. “This is a serious problem that needs to be examined. I will be investigating this matter to determine the scope and cause of these improper payments.”
As a minority member of the Committee Hatch cannot schedule a hearing on his own. An actual hearing might not be so easy to do even if he were the Committee chair. What do you do, subpoena the offending Administrative Law Judge and try to beat up on him? That might not come across quite that well.
13 comments:
Actually, I think a lot of people would support a hearing where said judges were closely questioned.
But why should we question these judges and not the ones that deny almost everyone? I agree some judges are probably paying too many cases, but just as many (probably more) are denying almost everyone.
Don't forget...every claimant denied by an ALJ has already received at least one denial at a lower level.
Therefore, it is actually reasonable that an ALJ could deny almost every claimant that comes before him or her. This would simply mean that SSA was making correct determinations at the FO/DDS level.
If you look at the statistics, abnormally high pay rates are more prominent than abnormally low pay rates.
@11:08 AM - The inverse of that logic is also reasonable, to wit, an ALJ could allow almost every claimant that comes before him or her. That would simply mean that SSA was incorrect in making determinations at the FO/DDS level.
There was a Wall Street Journal article about a PR ALJ who was allowing a very high percentage of cases, I think it was over 90%. The ALJ's should be subject to scrutiny and repercussions if they abuse their power and simply allow every claimant who comes before them. Perhaps hearings are necessary.
Drop the productivity demands and you will see a decline in the number of pay cases. It's much faster and easier to pay a case than than deny.
Just like I said Astrue is handing the Republicans an "I told you so". Obama wake the hell up
Productivity demands are not bad per se. But combine them with decreased staffing and other means to meet the demands will result in a greater pay rate on the whole. The math is simple -- requiring 500 decisions a year means you have to cut corners in time because an ALJ has 2000 work hours per year if he/she never takes any time off.
i dont mind if the affirmance rate was higher or lower than the current rate. i just wish for more uniformity across the board. seeing the scatter plot on the wsj article is demoralizing and further highlights the poor training aljs (the ones without prior SSA knowledge) receive.
What is disheartening is the fact that the AALJ will protect all these judges under the guise of judicial independence. While no one in management should dictate pay rates, management has complete control over workload. No one can screen, hold a hearing, write decisional instructions, and edit a case spending less than an hour a case AND at the same time give the case the consideration we should all expect. The only way to do that is to pay everyone,a level of decision making that certainly does not need a judge. Heck, it would be cheaper for the government just to order the DDS to pay everyone who applies.
With the 500 - 700 goal, a judge should be issuing about 40 - 60 decisions a month. Management could easily order that no one can hear more cases than that per month.
Many of the ALJs who pay most of their cases are Agency people who know (or should know) the rules, but choose to ignore the rules, buying into the pay down the backlog mentality.
5 ALJs in Queens are the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging bias because they deny around half of their cases (a denial rate which is certainly reasonable), while judges who pay 90-100% are generally free of scrutiny (because you can dispose of a lot of cases if you pay everyone) until the recent Wall Street Journal articles (and even in those articles you do not see much evidence that Astrue recognizes there is a problem with these judges).
@1:27 PM--Maybe that's the problem, since the rest of the agency works 2,080 hours per year. While it may be easier to pay cases, that doesn't make it right or acceptable. ALJs should do the job they're paid to do.
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