November 7, 2016
Carolyn ColvinActing
Commissioner
Social Security Administration
|
6401 Security Boulevard
Baltimore, MD 21235-6401
Submitted on www.regulations.gov
Re: Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking on Revisions to Rules Regarding the Evaluation of Medical
Evidence, 81 Fed. Reg. 62559 (September 9, 2016), Docket No. SSA-2012-0035
Dear Acting Commissioner Colvin:
Thank you for the opportunity to
comment on the proposed regulations contained in above referenced Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). I am writing
to express my strong opposition to the SSA’s proposal to eliminate the treating
physician rule and the 9th circuit’s credit-as-true doctrine.
I believe that the proposed rules
would unduly burden our Federal Court system and the legal staff at the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. Moreover, claimants
and your staff at the SSA will also be adversely affected as a result the
likely delays caused by these revisions.
As proposed, the new rules will lead to more federal court appeals, more
delays and substantially more remands for a new hearing.
It is no secret that the proposed
rules are part of your administration’s strong anti-claimant stance. This proposal shows once again, that you have
acquiesced to the Republicans’ pressure to “tighten up the rules” to make it
harder for claimants to qualify for disability benefits. However, I would like to point out your
agency’s current proposal will not achieve the results intended by its
drafters. Instead of leading to lower
allowance rates, the proposed changes will lead to chaos, waste, and
unnecessary delays in the adjudication process.
Moreover, the new rules will foster confusion at the Federal Court
level, resulting in an even bigger backlog and far more EAJA fee awards.
The proposed rule removes the
responsibility of adjudicators to explain how they weigh medical evidence and how
they weight prior determinations made by other administrative agencies. If enacted, adjudicators will have to weight
medical evidence without guidelines or legal standards. The vagueness and
uncertainty created by the proposed rules will lead to more prolonged federal court
challenges and not, to the “quick and easy unfavorable decisions” wished for by
its proponents.
It is a well accepted legal axiom
that specificity and preciseness in legal standards, lead to less challenges at
the appellate level. The vague rules
proposed by your agency violate this legal axiom. In fact, the proposed changes are an outright
invitation to lawyers and jurists to develop new case law to fill up the legal void
left by the absence of clear regulatory guidelines.
In my experience as a disability
lawyer, I have witnessed how the absence of guidelines to evaluate medical
evidence can lead to a significant number of remands by the federal courts. Besides practicing in the area of Social
Security Disability, I also represent claimants who have been denied disability
benefits under insurance contracts governed by the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). In
disability insurance cases covered by ERISA, the treating physician rule does
not apply and there are no clear guidelines for evaluating medical evidence. Due to the absence of clear guidelines to
evaluate medical evidence in ERISA cases, federal judges are often unable to
issue a decision and are forced to issue a remand back to the insurance company
for further consideration.
For the above mentioned reasons,
I urge you to withdraw the proposal to change the way that the SSA evaluates
medical evidence.
Sincerely,
Iván A. Ramos
