Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Keeping it Simple

Simplicity merely covers the complexity behind the beauty of the uncomplicated.  Indeed, one only has to look upon an Apple product, or a modern automobile, to recognize the underlying complexities which went into the production of such simplicity.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, there is often a desire to respond to an OPM denial by attempting to understanding the apparent ‘complexity’ of the denial.  By ‘apparent’ is meant the following:  Most, if not all, of OPM’s denials are regurgitated templates from thousands of previous denials, and quotations of alleged legalese notwithstanding, the basic components of a Federal Disability Retirement case do not change just because the language used attempts to complicate matters.

In the end, driving a technologically advanced automobile still requires hands on the steering wheel, and a foot on the gas pedal and the brake (hopefully, not both at the same time).  All the rest are simply “whistles and horns” to make it appear worth the price tag.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: Defining Complexity Down

The complexity of a Federal Disability Retirement case is made all the more so, in exponential fashion, when the inherent issues concerning the medical condition and its impact upon one or more of the essential elements of one’s job are difficult and involved.

The administrative process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is in and of itself a complex process — if only for the sheer volume of Standard government forms which must be completed — and is compounded in multiple ways when the variegated medical conditions are included.  Indeed, sometimes it is the combination of multiple medical conditions which, in the totality of interconnected and intersecting symptomatologies, constitute the entirety of the medical impact in preventing one from performing a particular kind of job.

It is the job of the applicant for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — the Federal or Postal employee under FERS or CSRS — who must define the complexity down to its basic, comprehensible and coherent, cogent presentation, in order for the reviewing clerks at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to analyze and ultimately approve the Federal Disability Retirement application.

A simple rule of thumb:  If you cannot explain it, how will OPM make heads or tails of it? The solution:  If you cannot do it, obtain the services of someone who can; normally, this would involve an attorney.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Making Explicit the Implicit

Sometimes, it is implicitly clear in the formulation of the Federal Disability Retirement application that the applicant is unable to coherently present one’s case in a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS.  

Whether because of the physical limitations or the cognitive dysfunctions, the brevity of the statement on the Applicant’s Statement of Disability, or the illegible handwriting, etc., may well provide an indication of one’s medical conditions and their impact upon one’s Federal or Postal duties in a particular position.  But to rely upon an implicit revelation, or to expect that a Claims Representative at the Office of Personnel Management may infer the intractable pain which the potential applicant may be experiencing, is to expect that which will likely not happen.  

The paper presentation offered to the Office of Personnel Management must be explicitly stated at every juncture, at every opportunity, at every potentially coordinating point — with succinctness and clarity of delineation, utilizing the language available, inserting the most effective, descriptive adjectives to create a compelling word picture, governed by truth and justified by the medical documentation within the parameters of the law, in order to express that which has previously remained implicit.

To make explicit that which is implicit is the key; to expect the implicit to be recognized by the reviewing individual at the Office of Personnel Management is to expect the impossible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire