I'm not familiar with theintercept.com but they're reporting that Mike Korbey, former senior advisor to the principal deputy commissioner
at the Social Security Administration in George W. Bush’s administration; former Reagan Social Security Commissioner Dorcas Hardy;
former Social Security Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll; and former Social Security General
Counsel David Black have been appointed to Trump's transition team for the Social Security Administration. Korbey and Hardy have a history of supporting privatization of Social Security, although I strongly doubt that any such plan will be forthcoming in a Trump administration. I can say that O'Carroll was no fan of Social Security disability claimants when he was at Social Security. I'm not familiar with Black.
28 comments:
I worked with Mike and he's from the Heritage Foundation. A nice guy just conservative. Worked with David as well and he's a pretty rational guy.
Really 8:21
Korbey wants to privatize social security, had a large hand in pitching generation Xers/the mils against the baby boomers to gather support for such a plan.
As for Black, sometimes people are rational to a fault and forget that they are playing with peoples lives.
Let's just say if you thought Colvin was a disaster, just wait. If you thought Astrue was a conservative, LOL!
Black is a military guy and spent more time on reserve duty than SSA issues.
O'Carroll sees fraud everywhere despite the lack of hard evidence. He has to, it's his meal ticket.
Backlogs will be the least of the concerns, it will be a replay of the purge of the disability rolls under Reagan.
I did some attempts at research on the Reagan era attacks on the system in the early and mid eighties. It appears it was the same use of attacks not based on hard evidence and the same kind of arbitrary actions we are dealing with now. It appears that a lot of people got back their disability after some extended suffering and turmoil. of course there was the upticks in suicides and deaths from the experience. We were luckier then because democrats had more power in congress and the judiciary allowed class action status for those damaged. Enough push back came from interest groups and the public to fight it off. It amazes me that the political party so concerned for the rights of all unborn takes these positions. Our soon to be Dear Leader and his man Pence even apparently believe women obtaining abortions should be criminally punished. However, a living person who is very sick or injured should not be helped or protected in their eyes and apparently deserves no human dignity. The Christ I follow made it very clear that if you turn your back on the poor, sick, the widow, the orphan or prisoner you will be judged for your sin. This is pure social Darwinism and cruelty if they follow through with all of this. How much push back they get and negative publicity will be key to stopping them. Trump just won on the back of a whole bunch of poor, uneducated and sick white people. My only clients who expressed an opinion about this election were white people voting for Trump. Hew will be pissing on a large portion of his supporters if he carries through with more Draconian measures. NOSSCR and all disability groups in this country had better get organized and get ready to push back.
Privatization of the disability process, particularly the hearings and appeals levels, is a real possibility.
Perhaps if they axe the filibuster but I couldn't see the Maryland and Virginia senators standing for that.
Good point 557, as that is going to be our only saving grace.
I really don't see privitazation happening. I don't see that many Republicans who would really push for it. There might have been enough time 20 years ago to make investments to fund retirements for the baby boomers. Not now! The focus will be Obamacare, legal and illegal immigration, jobs, terrorism, foreign policy, tax reform, etc. While disability may be a focus, Social Security in general probably won't. Too much to do to waste political capital on, which ultimately would be filibustered!
Privatization will never happen - despite the delusions of some of these politicos.......Even most conservatives and Republicans will not support it.
However, perhaps there will be an opportunity to clean up the appeals mess - by closing the record after the reconsideration - and making the ALJ decision a legal review of a true appeal and not the nonsense of a de novo review.
However, perhaps there will be an opportunity to clean up the appeals mess - by closing the record after the reconsideration - and making the ALJ decision a legal review of a true appeal and not the nonsense of a de novo review.
11:56 PM, November 12, 2016
And so it begins
The problem with closing the records is that the "facts" might not change, but the diagnosis can! I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia two months after I requested a hearing. The symptoms were all there, some 2-3 years before I first applied. I would mention 6-10 of them EVERY time I want to the doctor. Two or three might occasionally make into the records! I've yet to find that "curious" doctor that you see on Grey's Anatomy that just NEEDS to figure out what's wrong with the patient. Well, maybe the eye doctor who happened to see me trying to massage my lower back while seeing me the third time in eight months for iritis. He diagnosed me with ankylosing spondylitis 13-14 YEARS and dozens of doctor visits after my first symptoms. I am curious, would you close the record on a murder case after a suspect has been indicted? I don't consider a hearing to be an appeal, because it is really the first oppurtunity to make your case! DDS doesn't provide due process.
@ 11:56
Closing the record after recon would result in an explosion of wrongful denials, in other words, findings of non-disability for claimants who are in fact not capable of sustaining SGA. If I were the devil and wanted to increase human misery and suffering amongst the poor and disabled in this country that would be a great way to start.
Closing the record after reconsideration? This is the most asinine thing I have ever heard. Are we to trust DDS diligently acquired all the evidence before recon? And what of the two-year period between recon and hearing, is that suddenly not relevant? Or will an ALJ decision only cover the period between AOD and recon?
I fully agree with 5:57 (Tim), 6:00, and 8:32 from November 13: Closing the record after Reconsideration would be a disaster, and deprive claimants of their civil rights. The 2+ year wait time from Reconsideration to Hearing is reason enough. A lot can happen healh wise in that 2 years. It's ludicrous to think a disability claimant should be precluded from submitting and discussing progression of their impairments, or development of new impairments which further diminish their RFC when they are already aware of this by the time the hearing is held just to immediately convenience the ALJ
and processing. In the long term, it would be far less costly in terms of man hours to address these things when they are already known about by the time of the hearing, rather than hold a hearing, issue a denial decision, and refuse to allow this evidence in at a later appeals level, or require the claimant to file a new disability applications and start the entire process anew, and all the additional man hours that would entail. Further, I am experiencing the very same thing Tim reported, i.e., the FACTS, symptoms, etc., are still the same, but the diagnosis has changed, fibromyalgia verses spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. It is not uncommon that these disorders are difficult to diagnose, especially with the first onset of symptoms. Sometimes, it takes years before doctors are able to confirm the diagnosis is indeed spondylitis or rheumatoid arthritis, rather than fibromyalgia. Closing the record after Reconsideration would be a grave injustice to these individuals.
The current regulations and law would prevent a reenactment of the deplorable Reagan era actions. For example back then he had us ceasing people back to the day after an ALJ decision. That could not happen now.
When I said privatizing, I meant privatizing the hearings and appeals process. In other words, contract it out to an LTD. Think of the headlines: Trump reduces federal work force by 10,000, including thousands of 165K jobs. Public sector couldnt handle backlogs but private sector will.
Apparently everyone here thinks that 100% of applications for disability at SSA are legitimate and that the agency and DDS enjoys denying people so they can suffer.
I work for the agency. I get paid whether any claim I take is approved or denied. I do the best job I can do to extract information from claimants who are alleging an onset date 10 years ago and no medical sources to boot. I can't create medical records and believe me, the claimants largely do not help themselves.
SGA is not very high. It doesn't take much effort to earn about $1100 a month gross. SSA was never meant to fill the void left by all of the employers who no longer offer disability programs through insurance.
SSA disability needs a serious overhaul but no one wants to touch it!
@12:35
I have worked at SSA/ODAR several decades. It's not that many on this board think most SSA applications are legitimate. The claimants attorneys on this board only take cases they believe have potential for success these days in the deny everything culture which permeates through the entire Agency process, because cases with no, to little, chance for success usurp more time and energy than they are worth. Experienced claimants attorneys today are careful about which cases they agree to take in the first place. This was less true years ago before the denial culture in the Agency. Cases unlikely to succeed today tend to be Title 16 (SSI), rather than Title II (based on those who paid into SSA via work), and these claimants tend to end up with non-experienced SSA disability attorneys, non-attorney reps., or no rep. at all. Attorneys can no longer afford to take numerous cases knowing the time spent on cases not likely to succeed will be covered by what is earned on the cases they win.
What's NOT legitimate through the entire Agency portion of the SSA Disability Process today is this culture of denial which permeates every part of the process from DDS, ODAR, through the Appeals Counsel. This really does exist. I know longer believe claimants receive unbiased decisions any more at any level in the Agency process, i.e., DDS, ODAR, or Appeals Council. When I first noticed the denial culture a few years back, I began to notice I was getting more and more cases to write from ALJ's with instructions which I knew were preposterous, e.g., deny under Light Rule with no VE at the hearing and a laundry list of non-exertional impairments. As an experienced Senior Attorney, I emailed the ALJ, and when I did not hear back from the ALJ, I gave the case to my supervisor to return to the ALJ informing the judge I could not write a legally defensible decision. A few days later, I discovered the case went back to UNWR (unassigned writing), or already assigned to another writer. This persisted, and worsened, and led to the Agency's recent obsession with writing instructions which are too much and unnecessary for experienced writer's. On case I will never forget from that period is a cessation case of a young man who had initially been found disabled under meeting section 12.04 depression listing. The ALJ instructions were to deny under the Light Rule. I emailed the judge and my supervisor back and forth and finally got permission from the judge to do what needed to be done, which included VE an ME interrogatories, etc. The ALJ was an experienced former Supervisory Attorney and knew better. I even used this as an example on my unsuccessful ALJ applications. I also never received credit for all the detailed emails to ALJ's, managers, etc., or extra I did to do the case right the first time. Of course, a quality employee doing great work cannot exist in a production quota environment, and you regular readers already know the rest of the story.
Did your work obtain the information result in the aforementioned denial or did it result in a reversal to an approval?
@9:07
The correct work I performed resulted in a legally defensible denial decision. In this particular case, the denial decision which the ALJ wanted was well supported by the evidence I obtained, and I concurred with the denial in this case. There is no way a legally defensible denial decision could have been written in the manner I received it from the ALJ to write.
We were taught "when in doubt, deny, the Claimant has a right to appeal."
1:59 & 11:04 here:
To be more clear, I am discussing the culture of denial as I noticed it develop. As I said, initially, I began to notice more and more cases from ALJ's with preposterous writing instructions, sudden refusal to use VE's at the hearing when it was clearly necessary, refusals to use ME's, even when told to do so on remand, etc. It was noticeable because I had written for these ALJ's for years, and this sudden uncharacteristic behavior for them surprised me. Heretofore, these ALJ's had no pattern of such conduct. Then, I watched other excellent ALJ's I had worked with for many years being persistently harassed by local and ROCALJ (Garmon) management in the same manner I was later subjected. The harassment was so severe it caused these ALJ's to develop serious health issues. One ALJ who was targeted ultimately experienced so much stress they ultimately had a cardiac/stroke like event during a hearing, and was escorted out via ambulance. This ALJ never even returned to the office to get his personal belongings. He was literally pushed into a forced retirement. I would later learn he and the other targeted ALJ's were being harassed over production numbers and percentage of cases they were paying. I had never known this ALJ to ever have a "numbers" problem, or any history of being bullied for paying too many cases. Certainly, I knew this ALJ had what I would call normal percentages of denial and pay cases. Some of the other targeted ALJ's had Weingarten hearings through the union, and were persistently harassed throughout the process. Some used up leave to avoid the harassment, or developed such serious health problems, their physicians advised them to take time off and avoid the harassment.
What I now believe happened is the preposterous writing instructions I had increasingly noticed from ALJ's, uncharacteristic lack of using VE's, ME's, etc., was all about the pressure placed on them over higher production numbers, and knowing the percentage of cases they paid was being closely monitored, which had the chilling effect of pressuring ALJ's to deny more cases. In order to comply with the uncanny pressure placed on them by ROCALJ Garmon and local managers, several ALJ's believed the only way they could comply was by cutting corners.
During the same period, Chief ALJ Bice issued a memo concerning detailed writing instructions from ALJ's, and this emphasis went to unnecessary extremes. The Agency also established a more formal Quality Review Board.
The cessation case I received with instructions to deny under the Light Rule when the claimant had originally been paid on meeting 12.04 depression listing was a reflection of the pressure and harassment so many ALJ's in my office were being subjected at the hands of Garmon, et. al. The claimant did have some physical impairments which limited his RFC, but the first thing I had to deal with was the question of medical improvement regarding the depression, and then combined exertional and non-exertional RFC limitations, which of course, required a VE. The case had not been appropriately worked up before it had even been assigned to the ALJ, and the ALJ was so pressured by the numbers, numbers, numbers culture, they did not have time to do all the work that needed to be done.
As an experienced Senior Attorney, I finally decided I had had enough of writing decisions which I knew could not pass muster, so I had resolved to myself cases I worked on would at least be legally defensible. So, I returned cases which were clearly not legally defensible. When I later discovered these cases had been placed back in UNWR, or already assigned to another writer by management, I was stunned. This conduct occurred under the direction and supervision of ROCALJ Garmon, et.al.
Amen to A3:33. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced plans to change Medicare to a voucher system. Too bad about someone who needs open heart surgery, if you can't afford to pay the difference, you're out of luck. With this mentality leading Congress, I fear for social security, too. For the next two years, there will be no "checks and balances" except the judiciary -- and they probably will also come under attack.
As Americans, our whole way of life is about to change, drastically, because those in power think they have the right to ram through their agenda (never mind about the more popular vote going the other way).
I see backlogs and lines out the wazoo. Trump says he wants to cut the number of government employees, and Republicans have not demonstrated a willingness to adequately fund the agency.
11:55 AM. May I suggest a new motto for DDS: When in doubt, find out! If DDS is unable or unwilling to take a closer look, what real purpose does it serve?
We're about to see massive tax changes which will further add to the deficit. Keeping that in mind, I wouldn't count on seeing any changes for the better of the program. Perhaps DCPS will be axed as well as any other initiatives to modernize. They are going to have to make cuts somewhere.
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