Socialized compensation not a private insurance

Socialized Compensation ( Not a Private Insurance Scheme) 953-966, 978-
980
a. Social Security Disability Benefits
i. Procedure
1. Administrative Law Judge hears your case
2. Secretary of HHS reviews ALJ decisions
3. If you’re still unhappy, you can appeal to a federal district court,
which will review the Agency’s determination
ii. Substance
1. Prima Facie Case for Disability Benefits: only need to show that
you are unable to perform your previous work ( McLain v.
Schweiker )
2. Burden of Proof Shifts to Agency : the Secretary has the burden
of showing that the victim could perform an alternative job that
exists in significant numbers in the national economy
3. Subjective Standard : the alternative job must be one that
someone with the victim’s residual functional capacity, age,
education, and employment experience could do
a. Important, victims have a right to a Particularized
Hearing as to whether they could perform an alternate job
(see, McClain v. Schweiker , generalized determination
about what people like the P can do not enough/ must be
dealing with the specific P)
iii. Don’t get the benefits if jobs exist in the “ National Economy ” regardless
of whether:
1. such work exists in the immediate area in which victim lives, or
2. a specific job vacancy actually exists, or
3. the victim would even be hired if he applied
4. must be available in more than just one region
5. Justification : This is a Disability program, not an unemployment
program
a. If there are alternate jobs in the national economy (in
theory), you are not disabled even if you couldn’t actually
get one of those jobs
b. Gov. is trying to figure out how disabled you are and not
trying to make sure that you have a job.

39
c. This is a way to define disability, gov does not care if you
can get to the job but whether you are too disabled to do
any job
iv. ALJ is allowed to use Grids to determine disability (See, Heckler v.
Campbell )
1. Grid:
a. promulgated as regulations that were subject to citizen
comment and judicial review
b. made as rule with force of law
c. a chart that says when people are disabled or not
2. The particularized hearing rule (Id. McClain) does not preclude the
agency from using grid. (See, Heckler v. Campbell , where the
agency determination upheld although it failed to give a
particularized hearing)
3. No need for a particularized hearing regarding the generic question
of whether jobs exist in the national economy
4. Can’t argue that the grid (rule) is wrong, only that you are in the
wrong box.
v. Justification for Grids
1. Provides consistency/uniformity: eliminates lottery problem that
plagues the traditional tort system
2. Saves resources by not relitigating the same issues
3. There are millions of claims a year, and the grids reduce the time
and cost of each hearing (efficient)
4. The process of creating the rule was the generic “hearing” about
the adequacy and accuracy of grids
vi. Criticisms of Grids
1. The grids might be wrong or out of date
2. The victim can’t rebut the grid is he thinks it’s wrong
3. Bureaucracy (all compensation like this is necessarily) is an