People with long term disability are usually unable to work due to their severe health condition. They also encounter financial problems since they have lost their earning capacity while their family is burdened to pay for their expensive medical treatments.
To help persons with disabilities (PWDs), the Social Security Administration (SSA) provides them with financial assistance to meet their basic needs and allow them to pay their medical needs.
What is Disability According to SSA
• Disability for children
- Their condition is expected to last or will result to immediate death
- They are not working
- Their physical condition limits them to perform basic activities
• Disability for adults
- They are not working
- Their health condition will still not permit them to adjust to even less physically demanding jobs.
- The condition has lasted for at least a year or will result to immediate death
Two Kinds of Social Security Disability Claims
1. Social Security Disability Programs (SSD)
To become eligible for this Federal assistance, the person should have sufficient Social Security credits that will determine the amount he will get for his disability claims. This means that if people have higher earnings record, they will have bigger claims.
Meanwhile, disability benefits are also payable to people with disability, severe impairments, blind and to certain relatives of Social Security taxpayers.
2. Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
The people eligible as beneficiaries for this program are disabled or blind people with limited income. Unlike the SSD program which requires people to have previously worked and paid Social Security tax, the SSI is payable to disabled individuals who do not have Social Security credits.
Also, this program is not funded by Social Security but is subsidized by general tax revenue.
In some cases, non-citizens are granted with SSI claims as long as they are lawfully authorized to live in the US, granted with asylum, or they are legal refugees.
The Right to Representation
In case the SSA denies a person’s disability claims, he can make an appeal with or without a legal representative (representatives can be a lawyer, friend, or family member). Meanwhile, the agency said claimants cannot hire someone who has been disqualified or suspended from representing people before the SSA.
Four levels of Social Security Appeals
• Reconsideration – The SSA will review again the person’s claims. In this process, the petitioner can introduce new evidence to prove that he is eligible for the benefits.
• Hearing – When the person has been denied again, he can ask for a hearing that will be headed by an administrative judge. In this process, the claimant can bring a witness (medical experts, doctors) who can prove his eligibility.
• Appeals Council – If for the third time the person has been denied again and he did not agree with the decision, he can ask the Appeals Council to review his case (there are instances when the council rejects the petition or decides to return the case to the administrative judge).
• Federal Court – For claimants who have been denied, the Federal court is the last level of appeal where they can prove that they are eligible for benefits.
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