Social Security is planning to issue an "Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the need to update the medical-vocational guidelines." Inability to speak English in Puerto Rico may be on the table but who knows what else.
I understand the desire to head off destructive legislation but let's not get carried away. The Republican problem with Social Security disability isn't with the way the regulations are written. Their problem is with its very existence. Nothing the agency can do will mollify them. If anything they may see this sort of thing as a sign of weakness.
The grids need updating regardless of the political theater going on re: SSA right now.
ReplyDeleteIt would make great sense to expand the grids so they could be used more often as a basis for approving disability claims. Research should focus on more special medical-vocational profiles which reliably indicate inability to sustain SGA in today's job market.
ReplyDeleteResources are limited at all levels of the adjudicatory process, and waiting times are long. Grids and special profiles make it quicker and easier for adjudicators to approve claims that have merit.
It would make much more sense to completely abolish the grids. It,s ridiculous to make generalized assumptions about one,s ability to work based upon age. Make each claimant individually prove their inability to perform work.
ReplyDeleteThis proposed rulemaking is unlikely to go anywhere because upper management is unwilling to make the hard choices -- raise the age categories, exempt Puerto Rico from the English literacy requirement, etc.
ReplyDelete@9:07
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree. The grids incorporate age, education, general physical capacity, literacy, and skills. If those are impaired enough, you can make a pretty good judgment about a person's ability to sustain substantial work.
Getting rid of or scaling back the grids would hurt in two critical areas. First, administrative efficiency (and thus wait times) would take a significant hit if many more claims needed to be developed to a greater degree. The agency admits it is strapped for resources and that wait times are a big problem. Why make it worse?
Second, grid rules and special vocational rules promote consistency in adjudication. It undermines confidence in the system when cases with the exact same relevant facts get different results. The grid rules reduce that by setting out objective and fair standards to be applied in each case, whether that be for a finding of disabled, or not disabled. For cases with primarily exertional impairments, the grids serve an important function.
and ALJs whose payrates vary from 10% or less to 98% despite all having large N number of cases heard (many times these swings are seen within the same office or small geographic area) doesn't undermine faith in the system and show that this "objective" system is hardly so?
ReplyDelete"and ALJs whose payrates vary from 10% or less to 98% despite all having large N number of cases heard (many times these swings are seen within the same office or small geographic area) doesn't undermine faith in the system and show that this "objective" system is hardly so?"
ReplyDeleteThat's *with* the grids.
If you want things to get worse, meaning even more subjective and more chaotic, just take away the grids.
And then, on top of all of that, you will have a massive influx of request for hearings from the 57 year olds when they get denied at the initial and recon levels.
So, you automatically massively increase the backlog and you will need a lot more ALJ's.
So, from a political-bureaucratic perspective, if you take away the grids, everything immediately gets worse as your metrics nosedive into the abyss.
Since upper management is interested in their self-preservation, they are interested in keeping the grids or making changes *very slowly*.
You all who are chicken littling a removal (or even tweaks to) the grids are funny. Yes ALJs are forced to follow the grids, but do you think the high payers have any trouble putting someone to sedentary or light to grid them out or the low payers struggle putting someone at medium to avoid paying? Do you think, if the grids disappeared, that those high payers would have trouble making SSR-based or whatever they need to based findings of disability to continue paying the people they feel are disabled? That those who feel most of their claimant's aren't disabled would struggle to come up with a denial rationale?
ReplyDeleteA fully favorable decision based on gridding out is no easier to write than one based on sedentary exertion and significant manipulative limitations, or inability to sustain the basic mental demands of unskilled work, etc. etc. Similarly, I don't see the difficulty of making/writing an unfavorable decision changing much in the absence of the grids.
What would be the practical effect? High paying ALJs would have to come up with a different favorable rationale more often, and low paying ALJs would adjust to whatever the new system was. The middle of the road ALJs wouldn't pay as many retirement age people who would have grided out in the past. That last sentence is I think what the rep contingent/uber pro-claimant crowd is most concerned about.
So lower the retirement age to 55 since people can't find jobs at that age anymore.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the grid rules, I just received a curious decision in the mail. Claimant is 55, his PRW, according to the VE, was medium and skilled. The ALJ limited him to light and unskilled, which eliminates PRW and transferable skills. Approval under rule 201.12, you say? Not this judge! Fat lot of good the grids did my client.
ReplyDelete1:52 here. 202.06, duh. Whoops.
ReplyDelete@1:52, I just received a very similar decision except my client grids at sed. and the ALJ just totally ignored the grids.
ReplyDeleteI can predict that if the grids go away or are significantly changed to the detriment of the claimant, there will be lots of litigation against the agency regarding VE testimony/qualifications.
ReplyDeleteyall saw this right?
ReplyDeletehttp://oig.ssa.gov/sites/default/files/audit/full/pdf/A-12-13-13062.pdf
just a little more in depth than the one pager originally linked
ReplyDelete@12:38
ReplyDeleteYou are correct about the result-oriented ALJs in a sense. Yes, they manipulate the RFC findings to achieve their desired result instead of making honest RFC findings and letting the result flow from that.
However, the grid rules often force them to contort their RFC findings in ways that are not supportable by the record. That can create strong appeal issues likely to get traction at the AC or USDC.
In that way the grids improve accountability and help prevent injustice to some individual claimants. If the grids weren’t there, no contortion would be necessary, and improper decisions would be more likely to stick.
So it's better to pay people who are capable of working because otherwise it would take too long to sort out the truly disabled ??? What a terrible policy.
ReplyDelete@8:57
ReplyDelete@8:57
Yes, and I will tell you why. Already, with wait times as they are, no small number of people with legitimate claims get sicker, have their finances destroyed, become homeless, or die waiting for their claims to be resolved. Wait times matter a lot.
The grids and listings are designed to identify people who are extremely likely to be incapable of sustaining SGA. They save a lot of resources and time. Only very few who meet the criteria would be able to hold a full-time job.
Even for those very few, if they are able to hold a full-time job it is almost always in their financial best interest to do so despite the availability of disability benefits, especially in states where affordable medical benefits are now available to them.
As someone who is approaching 50, the assumption that everyone age 50 and older who is limited to sedentary work is disabled unless they can do their past work, is just ridiculous. There simply is no justification for this. 50 today is equilavent to 70 in terms of jobs which are available and likelihood that somone would hire you.
ReplyDeleteAhh...the parade of horribles. We must not change anything because change would spark change.
ReplyDelete9:17, it's not "that everyone age 50 and older who is limited to sedentary work is disabled unless they can do their past work."
ReplyDeleteIt's that everyone who applies for disability benefits and meets the non-disability criteria for SSI/DI (work credits, immigration status, income, assets, etc.) and is not performing substantial gainful activity and has a severe impairment and can't do their past work and has less than a high school degree (or a high school degree and nothing more that gets them into skilled work) and has no work experience or unskilled work experience or skills that don't transfer AND is limited to sedentary work is found disabled. Of course, if they do find a job that can accommodate them they can take it, and will come out ahead for taking it.
Interesting comments.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Grids do provide some uniformity of decision making and expedites processing of some cases, there is the totally valid concern that the GRIDS bear no semblence to current reality. 55 is not nearing retirement age anymore, 62 is. Moreover, I think that the changes in the workforce may be favorable to claimants. For example, I seriously doubt there are many sedentary unskilled jobs in the US economy. Almost all sed jobs are now skilled. So changing the grids to reflect this might be beneficial to claimants. OTOH, given the ubiquity of smart phones and computers, it is unlikely that there will be many people in the US economy who are truly "unskilled" vis a vis computers. I mean getting your iphone to work is like svp 4 right there.
Since outlier deny prone ALJS can ignore the vocational rules with impunity then, none of this matters. If the AC returned junk decisions, maybe a discussion about raising some age categories etc would be relevant. But the AC appears intent on comfortable hubris and anonymity.
ReplyDeleteI think SSA is going to have more problems with the DOT. I love how Posner is progressively disregarding its validity.
For 1:55 agree but re iphone, try a Blackberry if you want a phone that doesn't require you to treat it like a hungry kitty.
@ 1:55Pm and 2:30 PM
ReplyDeleteAccording to the DOT, SVP 2 unskilled jobs can take up to a month to learn. If it takes you a month to learn to use your iphone, thats 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, (based on your suggestions that someone with a smartphone has shown ability to do semiskilled work) you might want to think about going back to one of these style phones.
http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/ericlee30/media/Screen-Shot-2013-04-03-at-30444-PM_zpsa4c5434a.png.html
As an SSD attorney, I use the grids. But they are 1 of the few rules favoring claimants. I use them but personally do not believe all of it.
ReplyDeleteMainly, the rule for claimants between 50-54. That is aging but not old. If you can do a sedentary job, then why not do that job?
For some reason, 55 has always been the age of senior citizen in this country. I would not be opposed to basically raising it above 55.