About two and a half years ago Social Security changed its policies on voluntary remands, that is cases where the agency agrees that a case on appeal to the United States District Court should be remanded to the agency.
I'm curious. Has there been a change in the rate at which Social Security agrees to voluntary remands since that change in policy? Has there been a change in what they do after voluntary remands? Did the policy change matter?
6 comments:
If I were to guess, I would think they've started offering far less stipulated remands in the past two years. Wonder if that's related.
This is a very small universe of cases, subsequent allowances are very rare these days.
Subsequent allowances happen on a not that uncommon basis. It makes sense as most people applying for disability never go back to work they just apply again and some of them get worse in the 2 to 3 years it takes from an alj decision to request for voluntary remand. In practice the ac almost never disturbs a favorable allowance on sub app.
About the same time as this change the ac made it so they would auotamatically accept most requests for remand from ogc. I think that had a much bigger affect on voluntary demands. The cases that are not automatic ally agreed the ac still usually accepts. The ac mostly refuses voluntary remand only when ogc made some error or clearly missed something.
With that said ogc attorneys seem depressed that they have to "defend losing cases all day" not a lot meets the bar for voluntary remand.
@:1:20 PM
Wouldn't you find it depressing to lose half or more of your cases every year because people paid 2-3 times your salary can't even meet the low threshold to survive review half the time? I know I would.
Sounds like 8:35 has some wage envy and made bad career choices and wants to blame someone. Typical.
LOL at the "low threshold" for surviving review. If the courts were actually performing a substantial evidence review, then you might be right. Instead, they've manufactured numerous technical legal errors on which they can rely upon while avoiding the whole issue of substantial evidence. "Well, despite disregarding the opinion over the course of five pages in the decision, the ALJ failed to specifically identify the treating source's specialty as required under 404.1527(c)(5). Because she failed to do so in the decision, I cannot assume she did. Therefore, she committed a legal error by failing to address this critical factor, and the decision must be remanded for further evaluation."
I've also seen magistrate remands that say the regulations require ALJs to defer to treating source's and that their opinions are always entitled to the most weight (untrue). That standing and walking are the same thing (no they're not). That hospital discharge instructions of "activity as tolerated" is a medical opinion. That knee pain or shoulder pain are MDIs in the absence of any actual MDI that might be expected to cause the reported pain.
District Courts and magistrates have a similar variance as ALJs in terms of affirmations or remands. They also only remand around 5% of the total number of ALJ affirmations and less than 10% of AC affirmations in a given year.
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