Effective on March 16, anyone representing a Social Security claimant is supposed to file reconsideration requests and requests for hearing online, according to a new directive to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow. The directive states that "We may investigate to determine if a representative purposefully violated this duty or is attempting to circumvent our rules. We may sanction a representative who does not follow these rules."
I hope that Social Security is aware of the limitations of their own online systems. It is often impossible to file a reconsideration request or a request for hearing online. It is seldom clear what the problem is.
19 comments:
That would be great if the online appeals thing worked all of the time. I can just imagine this scenario: client can't find his denial letter and it's after 3:00 when the SSA stops taking phone calls, so we cannot file online. Call SSA the next day to be told yesterday was day 65.
It's not as though you can't file for good cause.
Blocking the avenues of due process(paper appeals)is never a good thing.
Do ogc attornies draft these changes?
signed,
the disabled.
I have discovered that when reps have trouble submitting the appeals online, it is usually the fault of us in the field offices. For example, sometimes we have failed to adjudicate the initial claim timely, thus preventing a recon from being filed yet. Remember, the denial letter comes from DDS. DDS can deny the claim but it takes the local office to push the final buttons on the ajudication. The other common problem is that the rep may input the appeal request (561) on one day and then submit the appeal report (3441) on the second day. When we import the recon request some claims reps will inadvertently open the 3441 to print prefilled forms like the 827 to mail to the claimant. When this happens, it locks out the attorney rep from submitting the 3441. Don't blame everything on systems problems, there is usually a person behind your problem.
OiG's response was that the problem belongs to the claimant and the lack the lack of a pop up blocker
I have deleted an anonymous allegation suggesting misconduct by a law firm as well as responses to that allegation. It's not appropriate to spread unsupported anonymous allegations. I'm sorry I did not take this down earlier. It's just not fair to make anyone respond to this sort of thing.
CTH
Of course, if any representative has evidence of wrong-doing by a fellow representative, a referral to ogc would be appropriate. I think there's a division handles rep misconduct.
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