Last Updated on January 10, 2012 by FERS Disability Attorney
Double Standards have always been applied throughout history; it is the mark of a bureaucracy and administrative process to apply one set of standards (normally, the prevailing legal criteria) upon the population at large, but be satisfied with an application of a different (albeit normally a less onerous) set of standards (a “watered down version”?) upon itself.
Thus, in a Federal Disability Retirement application under either FERS or CSRS, there are multiple self-contradictions and conundrums which cannot ultimately be reconciled, but must be lived with, but perhaps pointed out to the Office of Personnel Management in one’s rebuttal arguments. For instance, when a denial is received from the Office of Personnel Management, the set of legal standards applied in the denial letter will often require multiple criteria which fails to comply with the substance of the law. Thus, for example, the insistence upon “objective” medical testing; higher standards of proof than the prevailing “preponderance of the evidence”, such as “compelling evidence”; a medical condition which keeps a person “out of the workplace”; and other such standards which are nowhere to be found in “the law“.
In parallel fashion, the Office of Personnel Management will often rely (without directly stating so or quoting from their “expert” source) upon “contract doctors” to render an opinion. The puzzling contradiction here, of course, is the fact that while the law favors “treating doctors” and the opinions of treating doctors, nevertheless, if a “contract doctor” who merely reviews the medical documentation renders a negative conclusion, then OPM will rely upon that negative conclusion as opposed to the treating doctor’s opinion.
Such is the world of bureaucracies, the the beauty of double standards: from OPM’s viewpoint, it is merely the ability to assert power and authority, as OPM is the “arbiter” of all Federal Disability Retirement applications for Federal and Postal employees, whether under FERS or CSRS.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire