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Post by jimmy224 on May 28, 2023 9:53:47 GMT -5
Absolutely no mention of the AC? Hmmmm…. Why even bother to remand it back to the agency? If the court wants to find the claimant disabled, then they can write the decision and order the agency to pay benefits. There are remands for all sorts of things. The alj might find a significant number of jobs available in the decision and the court remands and says it is not a significant number of jobs. On remand the alj says whether there are a significant number of jobs is an issue reserved to the commissioner and makes the same finding and then it goes back to court trying to figure out who has the final say. It’s a vicious cycle |
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Post by arkstfan on May 29, 2023 12:58:56 GMT -5
All these articles highlight legitimate issues, while seemingly missing the mark when explaining the reason for the issue. This author cites to the ADA in the context of this individual's application. "Yet under the Americans with Disabilities Act, long Covid does not always qualify as a disability. People have to prove that it "substantially limits one or more major life activities."" The issue that claimant's will run into with long covid is showing that their symptoms will last at least a year. There is so little known about long covid and unfortunately for many claimant's there is little objective evidence contained in their telehealth visits. The long wait time may actually help them prove that their symptoms are a long term issue. While loooong wait times aren't good. I've worked cases that were 8-11 months from onset. I've looked all over and can't find my crystal ball to determine if it will last 12 months and doctors are so used to not speaking in absolutes and being guarded about outcomes that it is hard to get anything nailed down to address EXPECTED to last to the end of the clinical visit. It creates a very anti-claimant situation that flips at 12 months. |
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Post by arkstfan on May 29, 2023 13:01:15 GMT -5
I think part of the "bashing" comes from SSA having the "lowest staffing levels in 25 years"...that's got to cause some problems on the front-end of the application process. I do not hear reps discussing many long covid claims, yet. However, I think the inevitable wave of long covid disability claims is sitting at SSA (on average 7 months to get to the application at the initial level). I think badger is right, the long wait may help establish a severe impairment. Part of the problem for OHO is that those with longterm covid claims, supported or not, will want an ALJ hearing. Nonetheless, once the Agency gets the 2023 hires trained and competent, I would expect the "bashing" to subside quiet a bit. I've had a rep bring up long covid a few times but cases where doctors won't diagnose it and it might be years before they do. Doctors are more likely to say pulmonary function test shows restriction of unknown origin than diagnose something that isn't an accepted diagnosis yet or diagnose it as an arthopathy. |
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Post by arkstfan on May 29, 2023 13:07:01 GMT -5
There was a point in time when I cared about district court appeals and giving as much detail as was feasible in my decisions so that OGC could defend them. I’ve seen enough from both groups in my tenure that I no longer do. My focus is on making the best supported decision or the most correct decision. Drafting it is someone else’s job. Godspeed to everyone else that still puts extra effort into editing /supplementing their decisions. I applaud your resilience, you modern day Sisyphuses (Sisyphi?). Our service territory is served by two different districts. One district you can find some stuff to mine from decisions. May disagree with their substitution of judgment that happens too often but some good points come up. The other district, I'm offended they remand when the better solution is to give the magistrate a giant rubber stamp with a red ink pad to slap PAID on appeals because we don't get decisions right in that district and won't be deemed to have gotten them right until we slap a paid sticker on it. |
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Post by arkstfan on May 29, 2023 13:14:04 GMT -5
the headliner of the story, claiming he is disabled, while being photographed behind the wheel of a truck….. not that ability to drive is the disability litmus test, but…….. c’mon man There is nothing remotely inconsistent with the ability to drive and being disabled. Having said that- I'd love to know if the claimant at his hearing(s) testified to a complete inability to drive. I explore driving a lot because few claimants live in places served by public transit. The ability to sit, reach in front of you, use your hands, make spatial connections that I'm hear and need to take this route to get where I want to go, have the capacity to remember why I'm going somewhere, make judgments about what traffic and traffic control devices are doing. I find many claimants lacking the capacity to sit for more than 15 minutes often can sit much longer while reaching and doing some reasonably complex reasoning. People are terrible judges of time and distance in my experience but convert it to driving and it becomes easier to grasp. Of course there are people who cannot drive and are not disabled and people driving who absolutely are disabled, often with reasoning and judgment issues. |
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Post by ba on May 30, 2023 10:49:14 GMT -5
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Post by arkstfan on Jun 1, 2023 21:42:46 GMT -5
Just a thought on the rise in district court remands.
There hasn’t really been any sort of change that explains the increase. There have been some regional changes like Medicaid expansion but that can’t explain a national shift.
Only thing that has changed across the country is fewer decisions written in house by writers who regularly work the same judges. It would be interesting to know if NHCs are getting slammed by district courts at a similar pace.
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Post by ba on Jun 1, 2023 22:05:02 GMT -5
Just a thought on the rise in district court remands. There hasn’t really been any sort of change that explains the increase. There have been some regional changes like Medicaid expansion but that can’t explain a national shift. Only thing that has changed across the country is fewer decisions written in house by writers who regularly work the same judges. It would be interesting to know if NHCs are getting slammed by district courts at a similar pace. Respectfully disagree. The whole “here’s how to handle new rule CDRs, oh wait we changed our mind” voluntary remands have been hitting the federal courts, which has been a sizable number. There’s also a few issues that trainings have been instructing judges to do things that are not consistent with circuit decisions, but there aren’t ARs on those issues, which are producing federal remands. |
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