OPM Medical Retirement under FERS: The Peppered Denial

Take a handful of pepper and go out into the snow (which shouldn’t be too difficult, given the snow storms of recent vintage, at least in certain areas of the nation); throw it up into the air and let it “pepper” down.

What do you see?  Pock-marks of darkness, and as it dissipates with the melting cold, a spreading of dark spots — depending upon the kind of pepper it is. Or a shotgun blast from afar — see the spread of indented imprints left where the pellets become less constrained based upon the distance of the target.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management takes the same approach — of “peppering” you with reasons in a denial of a Federal Disability Retirement application.  X-medical report says Y; notation on the doctor’s progress note indicates Z; you didn’t have any service deficiencies; even though B says C, it doesn’t matter because OPM doesn’t believe D; and on and on.

One would think that, instead of such a meandering approach, the OPM medical specialist would present a tighter, more coherent basis for such an important issue.  The question is: Does each pepper-spot need to be cleaned with a salt-like application to answer them?  Or, can a more generalized approach be applied?  It depends.

Contact a FERS Disability Retirement Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Law and begin the process of responding to the peppered denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer