A while back I made a post about military disability and social security benefits. I just found out that even though I’ve been paying into Social Security for 35 years… which I know doesn’t actually affect my situation … and being 100% service connected disabled, my application for Social Security was denied. Even though the job I was working paid less than the required amount considered by Social Security as a suitable income, they still said no. What really made the whole thing even more ridiculous is the judge that I saw that supposedly earns his 6 figures a year said…if I don’t make the minimum required, get a second job. I’d love to see these morons lose a little of their haughtiness and come down to the real world and try to live on what they think everyone should be able to. Thankfully, I have the military disability pay so I’m better off than allot of people that apply. It’s ridiculous. The rich get richer and the poor common folk get dumped on. My lawyer has appealed.
Mike
There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.
It isn’t any of my business, but did you have a good attorney? In today’s world you are dead meat if you go into ANY court situation without legal representation.
Hi Deanna. Yes, the attorney I have is very good. I think more than anything, it’s a “sign of the times” that is causing problems like mine. Not wanting to get to political, there is allot of funding going into the war and a few “assorted” programs right now. Plus… social security usually is a MAJOR waiting game. I do have a decent amount coming in from my military disability. I guess what pi$$e$ me off more than anything is the judges attitude. If you’re not making enough… get a second job. If I do end up winning this case, I’d love to find out if this judge was elected or appointed. If it’s an election, every available dime I had would go to the campaign of the person he’d be running against.
Mike
There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.
Patrick,
Since 1973, I have worked primarily in the medical credit/collection field, most in patient accounts management. Social Security Disability has an “MO” of 3 denials prior to your obtaining an Attorney & getting the benefits…EVEN when your disability is totally obvious. I have asked Social Security reps WHY the hassle for those seemingly obviously disabled & the answer I got was that IF the person can WORK (not necessarily in their field and/or income range), they are not considered disabled. IF that is fact, it is RIDICULOUS!! I have seen people with DEVASTATING health problems get denied, & it still never ceases to amaze me.
Bottom line…DO NOT give up!!!..You WILL usually get the disability (retroactive) eventually, but you MUST be patient yet persistent.
Good luck,
Mike
My wife worked in an office that handled social security claims for many years. I read her your post and she said that folks on a military disability rarely got a social security disability too. She said she remembers it happening maybe twice in about 30 years that she knew of. She wasn’t an examiner in the office; was in the clerical staff. Don’t know if it was something to do with the policies or just a common practice. As I understand the process you make an initial claim, usually denied unless you are without a limb or have a terminal illness or the like, then you make an appeal and if it’s also denied you make a third appeal which goes before an administrative judge and if denied again you can start all over. Administrative judges usually overturn about 80% of the Social Security denials; so, maybe your best bet is to get to that level. best to have an attorney for the process. And there are time limits on the appeal process. Good luck with your appeal. If you win payments are usually retroactive to your first filings, I think.
When you live long enough the folks at SSA seem eager to sign you up, a few hunnerd a week and almost free health insurance. Although not enough to live on it has to cost the gov. mega bucks. Yet when someone is really in need they are denied. I think perhaps our priorities are cockeyed.
Thanks for your responses folks. I’ll survive if I don’t get the disability approved from Social Security. My 100% disability payment from the military is more than enough for me to live on as a single person. It’s just the BS you have to go through with our system and the lack of checks and balances. When you have a moron that makes the kind of money these administrative judges make deciding peoples lives you have to wonder. And it’s not a state by state thing either. The minimum dollar amount earned to be considered a sustantial income is for Social Security wide and it puts the person making the money below the poverty line. Something like $840 a month. BTW… the next day after receiving my denial notice I received a second notice from them. This one was a real slap in the face. It read… Based on what you have paid into the Social Security system since 1971, if you become disabled today you would be eligible to receive X amount of dollars. Maybe I should be a whistle blower. Knowing our government, a typed letter like this had to be the project of at least 3 people. You had to have the letter typed and the envelope addressed and stamped and I’m sure each of those “jobs” was accomplished by at least one separate person. I have received at least 3 of these letters. Depending how many go out knowing the recipient will have his/her claim denied at least once could mean 2 or 3 of these letters per person. How much do you think a government employee gets paid for these “jobs?”
Mike
There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.
Some of the people I’ve worked with didn’t live long enough to draw retirement benefits. I’ve attended two funerals of coworkers this year, one died at 53 and the other died two weeks ago at the age of 60. A supervisor colleague of mine almost dropped from a heart attack a little over week ago. He’s a few years younger than me.
I’ve considered taking early retirement benefits (working on my 28th year with the company) and renewing my teacher’s certificate. My wife is working me over about my lifesyle and I suspect she is making good sense. We have a six year old boy, a fourteen year old girl and two grown sons. I’d hate to drop dead and leave my family in a bind. We do have insurance but that only goes so far. I certainly don’t want to depend on SS to be there if we need them.
Maddog, I fully understand your problem and your anger.
It took me 4.5 years to be determined disabled after being injured and undergoing 3 spinal surgeries that stabilized my spine but were unable to relieve the chronic severe pain I deal with.
The ALJ hearing seemed to be going well with the Judge appearing sympathetic and my attorney feeling good about the outcome. Then the judge asked “What are you doing with your spare time.” I replied, “Studying Hebrew, when the pain is not too bad.”
It was like watching a curtain fall. I walked out of that room knowing that I was not going to win that hearing.
Sure enough, I was rejected and the judge wrote that “my wife had income and that I was not a credible witness to my own pain”
Therefore I was denied. He also suggested I get a job carrying legal files around despite three medical restrictions on lifting more than ten pounds.
Personal bias and governmental policies really figure in. We eventually were able to obtain a remand from the national oversight committee who wripped the judge badly for his findings. He let the case sit for another 6 months and refused to grant it on fact. We finally got a change of venue and the new board granted my case on fact, on doctors’ opinions, and on my testimony, all of which were in the file during the first ALJ hearing.
They try to force you to drop out. Oh, yeah. Since my injuries were work related, the Workers’ Comp insurance company that also refused to find me disabled got a big chunk of the SS arrearage.
aka Cap’n Yid.
Stev Lenon Trout Ski, 91B20 '68-'69
When the dawn came up like thunder
My wife has had MS for over 20 years. About 5 years ago, it finally got so bad that she just could not work any longer (she is a music teacher). She has had the same physician for 15 years. She indicated to him that she felt it was now impossible for her to work any longer. She was concerned about the length of time required to get SS Disability benefits, as many of her online friends with MS have had a real battle on their hands to get it. Her Dr. told her that he could write the required letter in a way that would insure that she got the disability determination. She did. She was not required to get an independent medical eval and did not have to appear before anyone to prove her case. Got the benefit on the first go 'round. Very rare. While it is not a lot of money (<$600 a month), it really helps. Thankfully I continue to be employed and have wonderful benefits from my employer (a university).
My wife continues to converse with other MS sufferers online. They routinely talk of the great difficulty they have with the process of getting much needed benefits. What a shame.
I made a post here about 1 1/2 years ago about a friend whose wife was hit by a car and was in a coma. She is now home (Thank God for that) but is in a wheel chair with the mind of a 7 year old. My friend just informed me that she was denied for SS disability. Our system really makes you wonder sometimes. I know of another case where the lady was denied because the judge “felt she looked okay.” She had a massive brain tumor and was dying. But the judge felt she looked okay. Like I said… and the rich get richer.
Mike
There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.
It took 8 years and three hearings for my wife to win her case. She was a nurse, and I’ve since thought that it would sure be poetic justice if the judge were hospitalized and my “undisabled” wife were assigned to nurse him back to health, in the condition she’s in. I think he’d get his eyes opened in a hurry. When I retired early this year, my company promptly dropped her from my insurance, because they don’t cover “medicare eligible” people. You can’t win.
Be persistent, and you’ll eventually enrich your attorney. Better than not getting what’s coming to you though. Hang in. Lew
if you haven’t done it, write your congressman and senators. Explain your case fully so they know what the problem is. You should atleast get a decent answer from them and if not, well vote for someone else. I have seen the congressional approach work with other matters.
Patrick,
It’s like a 3 foot flame, really burns my a$$ too! Really ticks me off when I think about the fact that you were disabled while protecting that jack-in-the box judge’s hide! Mike hit it on the head. Don’t give up. It took a lot of hard fighting for us to get Amy her disability after she was hurt at work. By all means hound the daylights out of your congressman and the veterans administration. As a service related disabled vet I’m betting you are entitled to a lot more than what you are getting now.
Sorry to hear you got turned down, but it is normal. Over 75% of original applications for SSDI/SSI are turned down. But it is true that about 80% of those rejections are overturned by ALJs on appeal. The system is set up to prevent the disabled from getting their benefits without the help of an attorney, who then collects 25% of all the back pay. Most disability attorneys used to work for SSA in the disability system…often as ALJs. Get the picture? They’re lining their own pockets on the backs of the sick and needy with full gov’t complicity. That’s the system we have. There’s no way around it. The average case takes 3 years. So, if you get backpay at $1000/mo for 3 years, that’s $36k. So the average contingency fee collected by a disability attorney is about $9000. A decent firm is handling hundreds of these cases a month with about 3 lawyers and 6 paralegals. So, if they have about a 60% success rate, at 100 cases/month, that’s $900,000/mo to the firm…or about $10 million/year. If they pay each paralegal $50k/year, that’s $300k/year plus payroll obligations that bring it up to about $500k. Knock off the overhead for the firm at about another $500k/year, and the 3 attorneys split $9 million/year…or make about $3 million/year each. And 2 years after I filed for mine, I got $1200/mo…$14,400/year. It’s a great country, huh? Of course, after 2 years with no job, we were also about an extra $20k in debt and almost lost our house and cars…which would have meant my wife couldn’t work either. My case was expedited because of the financial damage we were able to document and the fact that our lawyers are all retired ALJs from SSA and own the building that the SSA court leases its space from.
The moral of the story? Yes, the system sucks in a major way. It’s repulsive. It’s run by lawyers and set up by Congress. What do we expect? But keep pushing. Push your lawyer too. Make him earn his keep (as much as that is possible for a lawyer). Get every penny you are entitled to. Don’t take no for an answer. And don’t feel guilty about “whining” and “pestering” everyone. They’re making a freaking killing. And be very thankful that you have your military disability. I didn’t have that. And we had to survive on credit cards while we fought for the benefits I had paid for for over 23 years. Also, be very glad you can avoid the insurance/medicare issue due to your military disability. I can’t get insurance. I’m still a year away from medicare eligibility because you have to be on SSDI for 2 years before you qualify. Then, once you do, they deduct several hundred dollars/mo to cover your medicare premiums (that I’ve also prepaid for the past 23 years). And my meds alone…keeping them to the minimum of what my docs want me on…run $1300/mo. Remember…my check is only $1200 without any deduction of premiums for Medicare and I can’t get private insurance. So, my docs have cut my meds back to what they can scrounge in samples from the pharm reps.
FYI, you’ll also have to learn to let it roll off your back when you hear the self-righteous pontificate about how the gov’t needs to cut these “welfare” programs and make folks fend for themselves and “get off their lazy butts and get to work.”
Have a Merry Christmas everyone. And the next time you hear someone talk about the merits of universal healthcare systems, remember this thread. I have a disabled friend who moved to Argentina 18 months ago. He has already collected more in gov’t benefits from the Argentine gov’t than he did in his entire 47 years in America. My wife is German. They don’t have this kind of mercenary brutality in their system either.
Silver Mallard, you’ve pretty much got the inter-relationship recorded and displayed.
Sad to think that those of us who worked and paid to be covered in the event of medical disability are treated as if we are dirt.
After I had undergone my first two spinal surgeries I had to watch for the workers’ comp carrier’s PI’s trying to photograph me in some activity that they could call fraud. The fact that their contracted physician felt two initial surgeris ( and a third followup) necessary did not matter. If I were foolish enough to carry in a bag of groceries or drag a trash can to the curb despite the pain it would cause, they might classify it as fraud and try to recover benefit monies paid to me.
I’m aware that many people try to scam the system who are not really disabled. But a thorough reading of case files should rapidly indicate which of us are genuinely injured.
Between Gloria and me, our meds were running over $2000/month. Now I get mine from VA and she has just signed up for the AARP medicare drug plan that we hope will reduce our medication expenses.
aka Cap’n Yid.
Stev Lenon Trout Ski, 91B20 '68-'69
When the dawn came up like thunder
Sounds a lot like my father’s situation
It took him over 4 years to get his SS, but when he did, he got the back money, as well as my younger brothers (under 18). His lawyer didnt get paid unless he got the money, so he kept working on it until it came through, he also took care of everything for my father, who only on occassion had to show up in person for anything.