An Exercise in Frustration

A long experience in frustration. Waiting for Social Security to approve disability benefits can be a painfully long process. According to the Social Security, it takes typically three to five months to get a decision on whether you qualify. And first-time applications for “regular disability” have an initial denial rate of about 65%. So most people going through the process are going to need to appeal to have a chance at getting benefits.

To speed things up, it can help to provide the critical information about your employment history and medical treatment as soon as possible in the process, including names of doctors and hospitals, dates of treatment, and a list of your employers in the past 15 years with job titles, duties, and the requirements that you can no longer meet. If possible, an opinion from your doctor(s) showing the things you can no longer do can help show you can no longer work on a regular, full-time basis. Filing an appeal on the date you get a denial in the mail can also make the process a little shorter.

You can file four levels of appeals – but I believe the most important one is the hearing before a judge. I tell people that is the real decision, where a win or a loss is likely to “stick.” And although winning in front of a judge is definitely not guaranteed, the odds are a little more in your favor than at the first stage, when you submitted your application.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *