I’ve never filed for any sort of disability benefits, private or government, but I grow weary at times of those who think people are “living off the government” and lump people with serious disabilities into that category.
We have a friend who is getting Social Security disability benefits for non-physical or non-injury related reasons. We’ve known here since she was a young teenager (she recently turned 50) and, trust me on this, she has a truly legitimate case for her disability and for receiving her benefits. Yet when she applied, she was turned down. After a long process with many, MANY unexplained delays, her disability appeal was successful.
I honestly can’t speak from a basis of great knowledge on such matters. And I’m not naive enough to believe people don’t abuse the disability process, probably by the thousands if you figure nationwide. But I do wonder why my friend’s experience involved all those unexplained, unnecessary delays. It’s almost as if the system is set up to automatically reject a disability case no matter how obviously it meets requirements as sort of a delay tactic or an effort to “freeze out” legitimate cases who don’t have the legal help to appeal.
HoundDawg, I really appreciate your adding comments based on your years of experience in disability matters. I hope everyone reads this and thinks about all that it says, and all that it implies, to the general debate going on about health care reform — as well as the specifics about the nightmare/circus of disability and disability claims in our nation.
Reading that, I was struck again by the way insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, hospitals/HMOs, and many other big interests manipulate this and other health care issues. One of my MAJOR “pet peeves” in all this is the conservative political action group (funded primarily by a former health care company CEO who made millions [billions?] from that career) that runs advertising trying to alarm people about the danger of “government bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor.” What that whole platter of BS avoids, of course, is that at present, millions of people have insurance company bureaucrats coming between them and their doctor.
Agh! Well, anyway, thanks for taking the time to share your experience and insight with us.
You hit the nail on the head when you stated that it was “as if the system is set up to automatically reject a disability case no matter how obviously it meets requirements”. I spent 26 years representing injured people in damage and disability claims. Whether it was social security or private insurance, there was NO concern for the needs or well-being of sick or injured people, only concern for insurance company profits or reducing the payout of government monitored funds.
Through most of my years in personal injury law, the emphasis of those denying and defending claims was to minimize the extent of injuries and need for medical care. In the later years, however, the thrust totally changed, and the assumption in virtually every case was fraud – that the claim was phony, and that the claimant was not truly sick or injured and entitled to nothing, regardless of evidence, or the fact of paying premiums for years, or paying into social security for years, or in California, paying into the state rehabilitation system for years.
While I did not handle many social security disability claims (which are virtually always automatically denied, forcing the need for attorneys and appeals), I handled thousands of workers’ compensation disability claims, and saw first hand cases coming to me after total denial, in instances such as where a worker had fallen through a hole in a floor that had been concealed after a fire, where a steel machine cover had fallen on a worker’s head, and where a security guard had been struck by a car while in the course and scope of his employment.
For every person who seeks legal help and ultimately prevails, there are at least five others who never take it any further and never receive the benefits to which they are entitled
And insurance company propaganda has the public believing that it is sick and injured people who are the crooks.