Last Updated on March 15, 2011 by FERS Disability Attorney
The Office of Personnel Management will sometimes make the following fallacious argument: “Because your medical condition appears to have preexisted the time of your Federal Service, and you have been able to perform your job, you are not entitled to Federal Disability Retirement benefits.”
This argument may take on various forms, with embellishments on the language used, but the argument as quoted represents the essence of what OPM will often state. While the argument itself makes one scratch one’s head, there are implicit sub-arguments which, if extracted, extrapolated and projected/assumed, may bring one to a better understanding of what OPM is trying to say, and thereby be able to rebut and address such an argument. The expanded version of the argument goes as follows: “You had a diagnosed medical condition X prior to beginning your career with the Federal Service (often evidenced by a VA disability rating, or an MRI showing such). You were placed in job Y, which you were able to do all of these many years. From the time of your Federal Service to the present, there has been no defining moment or event which reveals that your condition worsened; only that you now state that you cannot perform your job.”
This expanded version is what OPM is often attempting to argue. Inasmuch as “pre-existing conditions” are not supposed to be a factor in Federal Disability Retirement cases (as opposed to being one in FECA cases), how does one address it? By pointing out to the progressively deteriorating nature of the medical condition; by having a discussion with the treating doctor that, over time, a chronic condition can progressively deteriorate the human body, through fatigue, longevity, and chronicity of pain (or a chronic nature of Major Depression, Anxiety, stress, etc.), and such progressive deterioration often arrives at a critical point where, once passed, there is a sudden decline in the ability of a Federal or Postal worker to continue to perform a certain type of work.
The key to an argument is to reframe the argument, so that one may understand and address it. Only upon understanding the argument, can one begin to address it.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire