Rejection of a disability pension due to insufficient impairment of work capacity

Facts

[A.], born in 1969, has been employed as a mason/foreman at the construction company B. AG since September 1997. In November 2002, he reduced his workload to 50%. Due to pain in his back and feet, he applied for disability benefits from the Disability Insurance (IV) on February 4, 2003. The IV office of the canton of Aargau awarded him a half disability pension with a decision dated March 29, 2004, effective November 1, 2002.

In the course of a review procedure initiated ex officio in March 2012, the IV office had [A.] examined in an interdisciplinary manner by Drs. med. C., a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, and D., a specialist in general internal medicine and rheumatology. Based on this, the IV office revoked the half pension in application of lit. a para. 1 of the final provisions of the amendment to the Federal Law on Disability Insurance of March 18, 2011 (6th IV revision, first package of measures).

The Insurance Court of the Canton of Aargau partially upheld the appeal filed against this and referred the matter back to the IV office for further clarification regarding the ability to work in a suffering-adapted activity and for the performance of an income comparison. The Federal Court did not enter into an appeal against this in public law matters.

After a further interdisciplinary rheumatological-psychiatric assessment at the Medical Assessment Center (MEDAS) Central Switzerland, Lucerne, on April 27, 2016, the IV office revoked the entitlement to a disability pension as of September 30, 2014.

The Insurance Court of the Canton of Aargau dismissed A.'s appeal by decision of April 13, 2017.

Considerations

The Federal Court dismissed A.'s appeal. It stated that the cantonal court had explained in an unobjectionable manner why it did not adopt the experts' assessment of the ability to work for legal reasons. From a somatic point of view, chronic non-specific back pain, persistent forearm pain, a subacromial impingement, gonarthrosis, and an enthesiopathy of the plantar aponeurosis were diagnosed, but these did not strictly speaking result in a reduction in the ability to work.

With regard to the mental illness, the Federal Court found that the psychiatric expert Dr. med. E. had pointed out personality traits that are typical of people who tend to develop psychosomatic-vegetative reaction formations, but had not said anything about the concrete manifestation and the functional severity of the…