The dates that Social Security places on its outgoing mail are mostly fictitious. Most outgoing mail is printed and mailed from a central printing operation that serves the entire agency. This correspondence bears the date upon which some agency employee sent it to be printed but the date printed and mailed is actually several days later.
There are time limits to file appeals. If these time limits are based upon a date that is several days prior to the date that the correspondence was actually mailed, the claimant is being cheated out of those days to file an appeal. Appeals can be dismissed -- and have been dismissed -- based upon these phony dates.
Social Security has finally acknowledged the problem. The agency's HALLEX manual for hearings and appeals has been amended. Now, notices sent out centrally will be presumed to have been sent out three days later than the date they bear. This is in addition to the five days given for the mail itself.
I have not seen this changed in the POMS manual that serves the whole agency but maybe I've missed it. It's needed there since appeals also get dismissed at field offices and payment centers.
Wouldn't it be simpler to put accurate dates on these notices to begin with? This doesn't seem to be a problem beyond the limits of human ingenuity.
12 comments:
We allow 5 days for mailing as a general policy. So the claimant gets 60 + 5 days for mailing in the case of an appeal and we work from there. That was the standard the 20 years I was in the field. I thought that was across the board.
I take more of an issue with the presumption of receipt within 5 days of the decision, when the statute requires appeal within 60 days of receipt not 65 days upon issuance of a decision, and not even 65 days upon actual mailing of the decision. This just seems like SSA is adding a second fictitious date.
@10:24
Our local hearing office did 14 days for a while, so it varies.
I sometimes get notice dated after the date I receive them too! It's bizarre. Regardless, we still use a date stamper in the office so I have some documentation. Also odd the envelope doesn't have a date from the USPS, they used to and I would save the envelope on things that were more than 5 days after for proof if I ever needed it.
Maybe next they address the problem of mailing letter about issues triggering potential overpayments without any date at all so that we can make fault determinations without having to break out the Ouija board or make offerings to the oracle at Delphi.
It is, for the majority of the agency.
The only exception is that OHO, specifically and only for centrally mailed documents, also allows 5 mail days plus 3 business days.
Why they are allowed to do that while the rest of the agency is not is a mystery.
10:24 here - yeah 5 in the field but mail delivery in our service area was routinely delayed so we were quite liberal with good cause if necessary.
From my experience, most people got the notice’s timely, especially in initial claims cases.
The post entitlement notices are quite often ignored and the claimant doesn’t even contact the agency until they don’t get their payment for a given month.
@10:24 from brief "based on an affidavit of Janay Podraza, Chief of Court Case Preparation and Review Branch 2 of the Office of Appellate Operations. Ms. Podraza’s affidavit describes the Appeals Council functions, and the position of the Comm’r on the response date. She submitted that we begin by looking at the first sentence of section 205(g) of the Social Security Act, as amended (42 U.S.C. section 405(g)):
““Any individual, after any final decision of the Commissioner made after a hearing to which he was a party, irrespective of the amount in controversy, may obtain a review of such decision by a civil action commenced within sixty days after the mailing to him of notice of such decision or within such further time as the Commissioner may allow.***” (Emphasis not in original.)
Ms. Podraza then explained how the Commissioner ameliorated the Act’s filing requirement by enacting regulation 20 CFR 422.210 stating how “sixty days” is not a legal jurisdictional requirement; but is a period of limitation running from when the Notice is received (which is presumed to be five days after the date of the document), Saturday, December 23, 2023. "
I have noticed that they often put the date of an ALJ decision three days after the decision was actually put into the electronic file. This may be good for filing an appeal but has presented a problem when DDS was able to make a favorable decision after the ALJ decision but had to put the EOD after the date on the ALJ decision. If the new EOD is after the first of the month the claimant lost one month of benefits
I, as an OHO insider, am very glad to see this change from fiction to reality. First, we struggle to remember to check the operative fictitious date appearing on the document instead of the date it was generated and added to the claim file when assessing timeliness of responses. More important, whenever we have a change in regulation that impacts language in our decisions, we have to scramble to mail unfavorable decisions locally to get the current date, but not to do so with favorable decisions that don't get a ficticious date. I've always wished we would change to using the actual date but recognize likely further delays in delivery.
This is not unprecedented. GN 00204.012.B already affords +14 days for centrally processed closeout notices “We add 14 days to the closeout period to allow for the private contractor to print and distribute the notices.” They just need to make a blanket allowance for centrally mailed notices.
It is even close, many CRs will grant them good cause for late filing. It's cheaper for the agency, benefits the claimant and is better on the FOs/DDSs than starting a new claim.
Correct
Post a Comment