Good Morning
The question I have today is why it is that when a disabled person applies for Disability it takes 3 months ,no 6 months, no one year, no Two years ,oops that may be wrong too, to receive benefits?
When will someone step in and investigate and change this out of control system. Social Security, SSI are two programs designed to help disabled people but the help is not always on time, if it ever arrives. According to friends of mine , Social Security will deny a person up to three times before approving a claim, Even if they are deemed disabled.
I did not believe it, I thought it was an urban myth. Until I spent time with people attempting to get the help they need. Until the day I went to the hearing set 15 months after the first application a person I know made. ( now I hear it takes up to 2 years or more to get to a hearing in front of a judge)
I went to the hearing call it moral support. She was being given the opportunity to have her case heard. The judge ask the SS representative their side of the story. They said and I quote. “Oh she is disabled and we have no argument against her claim. The Judge looking as stunned as we were said “good” and the claim was approved within seconds after our arrival.”
So why did they wait 15 months and force this woman to live on 200.00 dollars a month via the county? I don’t know , My thoughts were okay this is just one incident. Someone in the system screwed up. That is when I meet several others going through the process. One woman , has been attempting to get SS for over a year now. She is developmentally delayed and should have been receiving benefits since childhood.No one ever helped her. Hence the delay of benefits for her. She is going in three weeks to have another IQ test done, this will make the 3rd I believe. In the mean time she is living on 200 dollars a month.
A 50 year old man with severe mental and medical disabilities. Defined as disabled by no less the 3 doctors. WAs given his initial refusal in the fall of 2008, he had not paid enough in to collect at the initial application. Two months later he received verification that he could receive 700 dollars a month for disability, he had finally paid in enough.Frustrated he just sat on his hands and did not reapply for another 2 years. ( I hear that is what Social Security tries hard for, deny them and they just might go away. In the mean time he apply for medical assistance and he prays. The application process took about 5 months MA DENIED, Minnesota health care; 4 months later it was finally approved.
Maybe I am wrong, for as much education as I have I understand that you can not use specific cases as evidence that something bad is occurring. Someone must write the theory and test it. Others must spend time retesting it and come up with the same results. If there is enough evidence that it is occurring maybe in say 10 years a bill will get to a committee, and the Democrats and Republicans and can start the process of fixing it. In the mean time, I am collecting cardboard boxes so the disabled can have a roof over their head.
2 Comments
This country still believes in rugged individualism and looks suspiciously on people who can’t make it on their own. In many other countries, a more socialistic, communal system is in place.
I myself scrape by on a mere $470 a month. The process itself took nearly six months from start to finish. What took the longest was getting hospital and psychiatrist records from three separate cities where I have lived. Each provider had its own system for releasing information, and it took forever to get them all to Social Security.
Disability Determination will sometimes deny coverage to the deserving and sometimes it won’t. Each state has its own program and its own protocol. It depends entirely upon where one files. What took so long for me is that they totally screwed up the process on two occasions, and it took months to undo the mix up.
Even if I received $700 a month, which would be the maximum, I would still find it challenging to live independently. The way the system is set up, it forces one to go back into the workforce, whether one can or not. But you can also make up to $960 a month on top of your check and not lose disability, which is how I manage to scrape by.
I know a lot of people that have applied for it, and as far as I can understand, the minimum time for getting approved here is about a year. It can go longer than that but if you get it before a year’s up, someone divine must be watching out for you up there.
If you’re lucky, you have family or someone that can help support you until you’re approved, or manage to scrape by somehow. If not…