Getting Your Papers In Order

Tuesday Tips for the Frustrated Claimant

I frequently hear from people who have delayed filing because they want to get their papers together. My question is always, “What papers?”

There are no papers to gather before you file disability. When you put in a disability application, Social Security does the work of contacting the clinics, urgent cares, and hospitals where you have been treated. They gather the papers. All you have to do is sign release forms, state where you have been seen, and the approximate dates you were treated. You do not need to know specific dates of your appointments, sometimes all a person can recall is “winter last year” or even “one or two years ago” and it is enough to locate the medical records. 

If you have paperwork that you want to add to the claim, then this can be done after the application is filed. On average, after the application is filed, it takes over six months to get a decision. Send your papers after you file. For as long as it already takes, you do not want to add unnecessary time.

Bottom line: Do not delay filing your disability claim. Social Security will gather your papers. In the event that you need help, an experienced disability attorney can do it for you. If you are in North Carolina, we would be happy to help: 1-866-425-5347 is the number to call. If you want, we can call you:  www.hall-rouse.com is the website. You can do an online form giving us your contact information and we will reach out.

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Why Does Social Security Turn Down So Many 100% Disabled Vets?

     Does it not seem odd that Social Security denies about 31% of disability claims filed by veterans with a 100% VA disability rating? Research was published on this 10 years ago. Nothing has changed since.

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Higher Taxes On Billionaires To Support Social Security?

     According to a new opinion poll voters support higher taxes on billionaires in order to protect Social Security benefits. What do you think? I will say that whatever the merits of higher taxes on billionaires (and I think there's a lot of merit), it's going to take more than more taxes on billionaires.

    What do you think?

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Creamy Or Crunchy?

I like creamy. You got a problem with that?

    Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley recently said that even though SSI “purports to be a program of last resort,” it “forces the poorest of people to jump through hoops, stand on their head and gargle peanut butter in order to qualify for it.” 

 

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Some Grim Numbers

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Here's What's Going On At Ground Level At Social Security

     Here's a note made recently by an employee at my firm about a pending disability claim that may give you some idea of the state of service at Social Security :

TC [telephone call to] ____ DO [District Office] and she said there is an initial claim that has been sitting there since 7/14/2023. She is sending it to the CR [claims representative] Mr. ____ but he is off.

    In case you don't understand the context, the DO only takes the claims. They don't make medical determinations. Those are made at Disability Determination Services (DDS). Under normal circumstances -- which don't currently exist -- new claims are forwarded from the DO to DDS in a week or two. Even if there is some technical problem, the claim isn't supposed to be sitting at a DO for six months! 

    For this to happen there has to be no effective tickler system at the DO. I'm sure there's supposed to be one but it's broken down entirely under the enormous pressure of overwhelming workloads.

    I'm not even mad at the personnel involved because I have an idea of just how overwhelmed they are.  If a case happens to fall by the wayside now, we're just about at what I've described before as the "Not now. Not later. Not ever" stage of service. Problems aren't being straightened out.

    And please don't blame my firm. We've been trying for three months to find out what happened to the case. It's almost impossible to get anyone on the phone. There's no smart trick that solves cases like this. There's far too many of them. We're not supposed to be Social Security's tickler system anyway.

 

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

This Is What Social Security Calls The Waterfall Chart

     This is a chart showing what happens at each level of review in Social Security disability claims. Note that you have a much better chance of winning at the hearing level but you have to go through two time consuming steps before that. A lot of people get frustrated and give up. They try to go back to work but only last a short time before they're back starting all over again.

Click on image to view full size

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Where's My Money?

     See the chart below. It's not just you. After deciding that someone is disabled Social Security keeps taking longer and longer to pay the benefits. This is really terrible for those approved for SSI benefits.

    Why? It's what I keep talking about. The agency doesn't have enough personnel to get the work done because Congress won't give them an adequate operating budget. Listen, I don't work for Social Security. If the problem was bad management at Social Security, I'd tell you but that's not the source of the problem.

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Believe Them When They Keep Telling You Where They Stand

  From Bloomberg:

... The Republican Study Committee, which comprises about 80% of House Republicans, called for the Social Security eligibility age to be tied to life expectancy in its fiscal 2025 budget proposal. It also suggests reducing benefits for top earners who aren’t near retirement, including a phase-out of auxiliary benefits for the highest earners. ...

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

It's Taking Less Time To Get A Social Security Disability Hearing But That's Not Necessarily Good News

     It's taking less and less time to get a Social Security disability hearing. See below to see how much the backlogs have declined. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's taking less time because cases are backing up terribly at the initial and reconsideration levels. Altogether it's taking more and more time to get a claim adjudicated.

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

A Change For The Better

     On June 8 Social Security is changing its disability rules. It will only consider work done over the last five years in determining disability instead of fifteen years. This helps Social Security disability claimants. If you're filing for Social Security disability benefits you have to prove that you can't do the kind of work you used to do. Maybe you did a job 12 years ago that wasn't as physically demanding as work you've done more recently. Now you don't have to worry about proving that you can't still do a job that you can barely remember. 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Why Can't I Get Through To Social Security On The Phone?

     It's not just you. It's not just the phone number you're using. It's not just one or a few Social Security employees. The problem is much bigger than that. The Social Security Administration doesn't have enough employees to get the job done because its operating budget isn't high enough.

    You can do two things about this problem:

• Quit calling. Go to the office in person. Waiting around at the Social Security office for an hour or two sucks but it doesn't such as much as spending even more time than that trying to call Social Security.
• Complain to your member of Congress. That's who controls Social Security's operating budget

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Social Security Disability Recipients Are Too Damned Sick To Work

     From David Weaver writing for The Hill:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently released the results of a major study on disability and work patterns. ...

The new study, called the Supported Employment Demonstration, sought to determine whether service interventions could promote success in the labor market for younger adults (that is, under the age of 50) who suffer from mental impairments.

Individuals in the treatment groups received employment support integrated with behavioral health services. These services and supports, known as the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model, focuses on rapid job placement and eliminating barriers to work. The control group received no direct services or supports.

An important feature of the Supported Employment Demonstration is that it focused on individuals who were denied Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits. Thus, the experiences of the control group illuminate the likely outcomes of proposals by Republican leaders and conservative economists that would shrink the reach of such programs. ...

In the third year of the study, the average monthly earnings of individuals in the control group were only $395 — not nearly enough to ward off extreme hardship. ...

Conservatives often emphasize the importance of financial disincentives of disability programs. But, gold-standard random-assignment demonstrations by SSA have not found any effect on earnings from financial incentives embedded in the benefit rules. Why? Because the fundamental problem facing disability applicants stems from the way in which severe health problems, directly and indirectly, interfere with every aspect of employment. ...

Average monthly earnings among those who received employment support and behavioral health services were 40-50 percent higher than for those who received no services — further evidence that individuals with severe health problems need services and support to have some success in the labor market. ...

To be sure, the monthly average earnings of those who received services in the Supported Employment Demonstration were still modest, ranging from $553 to $590. ...

In the idealized view, only full-time work at high levels of earnings is considered a successful outcome for disabled persons. A rethink of disability and work would allow for programs, policy and communications to support diverse work patterns among persons with disabilities, including part-time work, episodic work and less formal work, including volunteer. ...

    The problem with Mr. Weaver's position, which he acknowledges, is that policymakers are only interested in programs that knock people off benefits, not programs that help them earn a little more while staying on benefits. By this standard, this study was a near complete failure, just as every other study of work incentives and work assistance programs has been a near complete failure. Even those whose disability claims are denied are too sick to work on a regular basis. They really are sick. The standards to get benefits really are difficult to meet. You can't make rational decisions about Social Security disability benefits until you realize just how harsh these programs are. One of the signs that policymakers don't realize how harsh these programs are has been the endless adoption of new work incentives and the endless funding of demonstration programs designed to put disability claimants back to work. None of it can work. The claimants are just too damn sick to benefit from these efforts in any significant number.

 

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

How Do You Provide Public Service When You Have This Kind Of Employee Turnover?

     This chart shows employee attrition rates at selected Social Security field offices in Pennsylvania:

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

What Is A Social Security Video Hearing Like?

     Increasing numbers of clients have their Social Security disability hearings by video. I prefer in person but many of my clients prefer not to have to go to the hearing office in person, especially if they live out of town. There's no proof that a video hearing either gets better results or doesn't. However, even though I prefer in person, I can't say that the results are worse with a video hearing. Here are some things to expect with a video hearing:

• Expect an e-mail from Social Security giving you a link to log  the video. If you don't get one, contact your attorney or call the hearing office yourself to ask that it be sent.

• If you haven't done so already, download the Microsoft Teams app. You'll need it to connect.
• At the time set for the hearing use the link that Social Security provided you to log in. If they're not ready for you, you'll have to wait until they are. That could be a short time or not so short a time if they're running behind. You may have to attach the charger to your device if the wait is really long.
• If things don't work, call your attorney or call the hearing office. Actually, there's a good chance that one or both of them will call you if there are technical problems.
  
• Once the hearing starts, it's much like any hearing. Pay attention to what your lawyer has already told you. Answer the questions truthfully. If you don't know, say you don't know. 
• Don't expect to receive a decision at the hearing.

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Do I Have To Choose?

     Let's say you're 61 and have filed a claim for Social Security disability benefits which is still being adjudicated. You're about to turn 62. Can you file a claim for retirement benefits? Do you have to choose between disability benefits and early retirement benefits?

    No, you don't have to choose. You can do both. Go ahead and file the early retirement claim. You'll be paid that benefits, which is reduced from the full benefit rate, referred to in the business as the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA). If you're eventually approved for Social Security disability benefits they'll pay you the difference between the reduced early retirement benefit and the PIA for those months after you turned 62.

    One minor hitch: You can't file a retirement claim online after you've filed a disability claim. It's some  systems limitation. You'll have to go to a Social Security office in person or call them, if you can get through. 

    Also, if you're between 62 and full retirement age and already drawing Social Security early retirement benefits, you can still file a claim for Social Security disability benefits. Same deal.

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347