Experience Getting/Keeping SSI for Your Children?
We urgently request your suggestion
of private non-profit organizations who sponsor support groups
for parents of children with disabilities
receiving SSI (Supplemental Security Income).
Parents
are contacting us asking this information. Please
contact Doug Smith dfacts@earthlink.net if willing to suggest
an organization that has served you well while you were getting
or receiving SSI for a child with disabilities. Please give
some details of how the organization helped you. Thanks!
HOW USEFUL IS THE SOCIAL SECURITY LISTING TO TREATING DOCTORS?
Has someone told
you to get a copy of the “Listing of Impairments” to
help your treating doctor write a medical report for Social Security?
Think twice before putting much effort into this. The doctors
we know typically have not found the Listing very helpful in
writing
medical reports for Social Security. We do not encourage people
to invest major effort in getting a copy of the Listing for their
doctors.
We have several reasons for taking this position, including:
1. Publicly available copies of the Listing typically are out
of date;
2. Few doctors have training or experience in using the listing;
3. Social Security seldom seems swayed by a treating doctor’s
opinion about a Listing.
Social
Security regulations describe Listing issues as “reserved to the Commissioner.” We
understand that to mean the Commissioner pays great attention
to opinions of Social Security doctors and little attention
to opinions of treating doctors on Listing issues.
A Social Security comment in the recent update of the Lupus Listing (Listing 14.02) seems to confirm our understanding. The agency said,
“We
do not expect physicians and other medical sources to use our
terminology . . .”
And
later they explained that whether or not a patient’s
condition satisfies Listing criteria,
“is an administrative finding that we make based upon consideration of all relevant evidence in the individual’s case record, which may include information that the treating source does not have. We only need evidence describing the individual’s
limitations, and we will determine whether those limitations
meet our definition . . .”
In short, we believe that Social Security considers few (if any) treating doctors to be authorities on the Listing. That is why we do not encourage people who inquire with us to invest major effort in getting a copy of the Listing for their doctors.
The discussion in the new Lupus Listing may be found in the Federal Register for March 18, 2008, beginning at page 14590.
Individual
Requests for Advice or Information
We welcome questions about our products, or about orders you have placed or intend to place.
Also, welcomed are ideas for improvement. If you spot flaws or unclear language in our publications or website we value your suggestions for correction or clarification.
However, we lack the resources to respond to requests for individual advice or information.
We encourage customers to consult sources equipped to offer personal advice such as: their local Social Security offices, private organizations of experienced disability lawyers such as NOSSCR, bar association lawyer referral services, and legal aid offices for individual advice or information.
HINT:
DON’T GIVE SSA PAPERS THAT LACK PAGE NUMBERS
People applying for Social Security disability benefits should assure that documents they or their medical providers submit to the Social Security Administration (SSA) have page numbers. Otherwise SSA may put documents into their electronic system and later print them out as an un-numbered and almost useless stack of paper.
Claimants
should number pages of any documenst they create, and ask medical
providers to number pages of documents they provide on their
behalf. Here’s why we mention this.
Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) hearings are about documents, testimony, medical opinion, and discussion of what they mean. But how do hearing participants (the ALJ, attorney, medical expert, and claimant) discuss a particular document buried in a six inch stack of papers (or in an electronic file) when none are properly marked?
A
disability attorney asked this question yesterday (April 19,
2007) at
a Baltimore conference of the National Organization of Social
Security Claimants’ Representatives (NOSSCR). He had
encountered this very situation recently
A Social Security deputy commissioner responded that she knew about the problem but it is rare. She said SSA is developing software to assure that print-outs and electronic records are numbered or otherwise organized.
Still,
we hope that claimants, attorneys, and their medical providers
will take care to mark documents with page numbers to make
them accessible. This will assure that their cases are not “the rare case” afflicted
with disordered documents that the lawyer and deputy commissioner
discussed at Baltimore.
SOCIAL
SECURITY FIELD OFFICES SHRINKING
Social Security field offices lost 873
staff members between October 2005 and September 2006.
Fewer staff members means less help for people struggling with
Social Security disability forms. For
more on this, click
here.
SHOULD SSA CLOSE OFFICES ONE DAY A WEEK TO IMPROVE WORK?
The
Commissioner of Social Security floated this idea (which would be tested in
thirty offices) in remarks on August 9, 2006. For more on this, click here.
For more Social Security disability news, click here.
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