NEW RULES OF EVIDENCE START 3/27/17

Things change.  Social Security certainly does.

Beginning March 27, 2017, Social Security has adopted a new rule that may make it even harder to get a disability benefit approved.

Previously, Social Security gave additional weight to the opinion of the claimant's personal, treating doctor.  So, if the Social Security doctor said that you have no severe impairment and your doctor said that you do, your doctor's opinion got more weight.  (The theory:  Your doctor knows you better than a one-time examiner).

No longer.  Now, the opinion of all treating sources can be given the same weight by decision makers.  That means that a Social Security doctor who saw you one time for fifteen minutes can be given as much weight as your doctor who has treated you for 25 years.  Worse yet, a Social Security doctor in Birmingham who has never met you, but only reviews your records, can be given as much weight as your treating doctor.  Social Security is supposed to look at the opinion of each doctor and decide which one is most "convincing."

I believe this new rule is a reaction to two things which Social Security and the Congress saw as big problems:

1).  It's a response to "doctor shopping," where claimants or their lawyers go find a doctor willing to support a disability claim.  In a few cases, a doctor has fraudulently given a favorable medical opinion for cash--as in the now infamous case in Kentucky.  This was, however, a very rare and isolated incident.

2)  Congress has been concerned that too many claimants are being approved for diseases that are difficult to prove with objective medical evidence.  Mental illness, fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue, migraines, etc. have no medical test that can verify the illness. Social Security has been told to put its foot down.  And it did.

This new rule is open for abuse by Social Security decision makers. I hope it will not hapen, but it could. The new rule provides judges and other decision makers an opportunity to deny claims, even when the claimant's doctor is saying that a severe and disabling impairment is present.  All you need now is one other doctor to say the opposite.  And, as we all know, Social Security has no shortage of those doctors.  

 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/18/2017-00455/revisions-to-rules-regarding-the-evaluation-of-medical-evidence