226
E. J. Bean
he’d reached those numbers by employing numerous inappropriate shortcuts. His tactics included skipping hearings, ignoring a lot of the case file evidence, leaving contradictory evidence unresolved, sometimes cutting and pasting descriptions of medical evidence from the case file directly into his opinions without explaining what it meant, and sometimes writing the phrase “etc., etc., etc.” rather than describe the relevant evidence. That type of shoddy work was easy to condemn. But decisions issued by other judges were more difficult to assess, because the Levin team just didn’t know enough about medical decisionmaking. It became clear that getting ourselves and Senator Levin comfortable with all 300 cases, while not impossible, would require weeks, if not months, of additional work. Still another problem was that Senator Levin disagreed with a key Coburn recommendation for stopping the abuses—mandating the participation of an SSA representative in every disability appeals hearing. Senator Levin saw that approach as expensive, time consuming, and one that would turn the proceedings into adversarial adjudications instead of non-adversarial, administrative reviews. In the end, given the time already spent on the investigation and differences over how to solve the problems, Senator Levin decided not to join the Coburn report, but to support its release and hold a PSI hearing on the issues. He also instructed us to be supportive of the report with the press by describing the enormous amount of work that went into the investigation, the bipartisan nature of the inquiry, and the many important issues uncovered. We knew that his decision not to join the report would be a blow to the Coburn team, and it was hard to convey it. But we did, explaining the problem. By then, they were very familiar with Senator Levin’s focus on detail and were able to accept the explanation as sincere. We attended the press briefing in which Senator Coburn released the report and were as supportive of it as we could be while holding true to Senator Levin’s concerns. The hearing took place in September 2012. The key finding in the Coburn report was that more than a quarter of the administrative law judges’ decisions reviewed had “failed to properly address insufficient, contradictory, or incomplete evidence.” The report noted that its finding corroborated a 2011 internal quality review conducted by SSA itself which found that, on average nationwide, administrative law judge disability decisions contained errors or insufficient information 22% of the time. Problems identified by the Coburn report included superficial hearings; the misuse of expert testimony; and decisions approving disability benefits without citing adequate, objective medical evidence to support the finding, without explaining the medical basis for the decision, without showing how the claimant met the basic listing elements, or at times without taking into account contradictory evidence.
