Law expands INSS fine-tooth comb and authorizes remote benefit review

The INSS (Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social) will be able to extend the fine-toothed comb in disability benefits, with the inclusion of accident assistance in the list of those that can be reviewed and cut by the agency, and carry out the review at a distance, as authorized by law. 14,441, published this Monday (5th) in the Federal Official Gazette.

The new legislation makes permanent the possibility of granting sick pay without on-site expertise, just by sending a medical certificate, and expands the institute’s automatic activities, with automatic appeal against benefit cutting and distance cutting of disability benefit.

The release of sick pay with document analysis is a way for the INSS to try to reduce the waiting list for expertise, which is about 1 million insured. The measure had already been used at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when in-person service was completely suspended for a few months, and was used again in July this year.

According to Adriane Bramante, president of the IBDP (Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law), the law provides that there will be a normative act by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare determining in which situations the insured can use the granting of the benefit without an in-person expertise.

Currently, it is possible to request sick pay by sending the medical certificate through the Meu INSS application for cases in which the leave is up to 90 days and provided that it is not an accident at work. In other cases, it is necessary to schedule an in-person medical examination.

In a note, the Ministry of Labor and Welfare informs that a joint ordinance with the institute regulated the conditions for granting assistance without expertise. Regarding the new law, the institute says that it is “authoritative” and that “future actions will still depend on internal studies and analyses”.

Currently, there are 998,433 investigations scheduled throughout Brazil. Of this total, 594,511 are for initial expertise and 217,426 are appointments for BPC (Continued Provision Benefit).

For lawyer Rômulo Saraiva, a specialist in Social Security and columnist for Sheetit is beneficial for the insured to have the option of requesting assistance without expertise.

“The measure is good because it already alleviates the situation of those who need a disability benefit and have been waiting for months. Remembering that, unfortunately, this problem will not be solved anytime soon”, he says.

A fine comb can be done remotely

According to the rules of the new law, the INSS will be able to comb the following benefits: temporary disability assistance, accident assistance, permanent disability retirement and pension granted to an insured person considered invalid.

In addition, there is another novelty, according to lawyer Roberto de Carvalho Santos, president of Ieprev (Institute of Social Security Studies), which is the review remotely or by document analysis. The rules of this review, however, must be edited by the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, which must indicate in which situation there will be a distance comb.

“This possibility of re-analysing the benefit for permanent disability remotely, by means of document analysis, is very bad. It has to be by face-to-face medical expertise, but this is the way to go, to do everything remotely.”

automatic feature

The insured person who undergoes a fine-tooth comb and has the benefit cut, either after a face-to-face medical examination or in the distance expertise, can make an appeal to the institute within 30 days, which will automatically forward a request for the server to make new analysis of the case.

For Santos, this measure is positive, as the beneficiary will have the chance to be reassessed before entering an appeal process, in fact, in the Appeals Council, which can take a long time to resolve.

The new law is derived from the provisional measure 1,113/22, of April this year. Since the publication of the MP, assistance without expertise was already possible, but it only started to work again in July, after rules published by the federal government.

President vetoed part of the law dealing with real estate

Law 14,441 was sanctioned with vetoes by Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who barred articles that dealt with the management of Social Security properties. One of the articles determined that the expenses with real estate of the General Regime Fund could be defrayed by the Union, according to Paulo Carvalho, a lawyer for the Trench Rossi Watanabe social security group.

“Creating additional expenses for the Union, such as the maintenance of FRGPS properties could be considered unconstitutional, as it burdens other citizens, who are not FRGPS beneficiaries”, he says.