(REMASTERED) Q&A: Social Security Disability Today - 8/21/2011

0:13 All, good day, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Q and A Social Security Disability Today. I am your host, attorney Anthony Reeves, and it's always a pleasure to have you with me. All right, let's go ahead and get jumping on to our questions. The first question was in your most current video, you talked about how Social Security Administration may look at cases involving heart conditions with applicants who are thirty two and have a college degree versus an applicant who doesn't. Is this a major factor in how they decide whether or not you may qualify for SSI or SSDI. All right, let's kind of go through the steps of the process here. The first step, there's five steps in the process. First is are you working?

0:51 Go pass that one. If you're not working, they want to know if you have a disability this lasted twelve months or more. Going past that one. Third step is do you have a condition that meets the criteria that's listed within the listed medical conditions of Social Security. If you don't have that, they go to the fourth step.

1:06 The fourth step is looking at your residual functional capacity, which is basically what you're able to do despite your limitations, whether they be physical or mental. And then they go to the three additional categories, how old you are, okay, your educational experience, and your work experience. Now, let's kind of break those down according First of all, age is broken into different categories. There are, of course kids, children which are seventeen years old, and younger younger individuals which are eighteen to forty nine, closely approaching advanced age, which is fifty to fifty four, advanced age which is fifty to fifty five to fifty nine, and then closely approaching retirement age, which is sixty to sixty four. Now, this

1:53 is what I tend to tell people all the time. Each one of those things, the categories the age, work experience, and the education supposedly has a direct correlation to your ability to be able to reacclimate yourself into the workforce if necessary. If you're between age of eighteen and forty nine, there is a certain consumption that your ability to reintegrate into the workforce is a lot easier at that age because why you're young. It's a nice way of saying you're still young, so you're young enough to be able to go to another job without having any problems. Okay, so that's the first thing. Education. The idea is there's three levels. There's marginal, there's limited, and then there is high school or more. That's another correlation. The more education

2:43 you have, the better they believe that you, as an individual have you have a better opportunity to acquire a different skills in order to reintegrate into the workforce. So if you're limited trying to remember, I believe it's ninth like eighth grade, excuse me, marginal, which is under the ninth grade. If you've got like a six or seventh grade education, as opposed to somebody with a college degree, that education, somebody with a college degree is going to be presumed to have a better ability to learn new skills and acclimate into the workforce a lot better than somebody with a six or seventh grade education. Then you have your work experience. Here's where a skill sets come into play. Some jobs are categorized as unskilled, semi skills

3:24 are skilled. Semi skills are usually those. Here's let me quad break into skill category. Here. What you need to understand unskilled there are no transferability to skills skills. It depends on the type of job. But skilled and semi skilled are really your biggest ones that you look at when you work at a job, certain jobs you are going to learn skills that you can use at other jobs.

3:51 So guess what if you worked as a toll collector, guess what you did. You handled money. So if you get a job as a cashier, the fact that you have experience dealing with handling money is going to be a transferable skill because it's the same type of skill. So to answer that first question, and this may be a long winded when they're looking at your condition, they're taking all those factors in combination. So they're going to look at the fact how old are you. Are you a younger individual, do you have higher education meaning you high school of more will kind of work background, and those things collectively are all utilized in making a determination of whether you can do the work that you used

4:31 to do, and work that you may have done in the past as well, I mean, and other work that you've done that you may be able to do as well. So I know that's a mouthful, so I hope that helped all right. This person asked a question about er visits and they don't have a primary doctor. Is it going to hurt their case, and so what are their options? Okay, in this particular example, the big question was the person had a real serious health condition, but they don't have a primary doctor. How does that hurt or help their case?

4:59 First of all, depends on the condition, because let's be real, an er visit typically is indicative of the fact that something went down in your situation that was real bad. Think about it. You are a god of the emergency room unless you are a real bad shape. Now, don't get me wrong. With the status of our healthcare system right now, a lot of people are using the emergency room as their primary care. So I'm not going to sit here in a vacuum pretending like I don't know that's what happens. But when they're evaluating your condition, remember, an er visit is primarily designed to treat as you get you stable so that you can go out and then go to a primary doctor. Some people don't have that luxury, unfortunately, some people are limited to just going

5:40 to the er. The er tends to be one shot, one killed type of situation. You go in there when things are really bad, you get stabled, then you don't go back again until you get bad acare. Now can you connect all those together? Depends on the condition. For instance, if you have it, if you're having a diabetic attack on a regular aid, well, the part of the reason you're having to diabetic attack is because you don't have any medication because you have no primary doctor. So what happens is they stabilize you. They give you like a week's supply from the hospital. They tell you to go to your primary to get you a regular prescription where you don't have a primary So guess what happens. You run out of that med's a couple of days past

6:19 cooon it happens again. So in that scenario, it's going to be tough because there's no way of knowing whether if you had treatment on a regular basis you'd be okay. In addition, that er VI is that may hurt you because they may demonstrate that if you are receiving treatment on a consistent basis, you might be better. Now, as you may have noticed, I said, it depends on the condition.

6:41 If you get diagnosed with something that's just terminal, like if you go in and they determine that you have colon cancer or breast cancer, something that they need to rush to treat you right away with that's going to have some residuals because there's a lot of programs for people who have terminal conditions like cancer or age or things like that. Those are a little different because those are conditions that the end result may result in death.

7:04 So again, an er is not always the best source because it's indicating of a one shot, one type, one killed type of environment. But it really depends on the condition itself. It can help, but sometimes it can't. It can hurt as well. All right. Then this person asked the question. They filed the claim in January of twenty eleven.

7:24 They want to know if the claim is approved, will we be ventuacted to a certain time in the application? Basically, will you get back pay? Playing and Stipple answer to this, It depends on when they determine your disabled. If you applied in January of twenty eleven and they found you disabled, Let's say today today is August whatever date or whatever date today is when you view this video, Well, guess what, you're not getting me back pay if they find you disabled today. This kind of then not trying to be funny. Also, it depends on the type of application and when you said you were disabled. Let's say you applied for disability January twenty and eleven, and you said that you became disabled Nuary twenty eleven, and this was a disability assurance

8:02 benefits case. Well, if they found you disabled today, you got a five months waiting period, which means, if it's August, you're talking September, October, noveend of December, January, you won't see a disability check until guess what, Fetuary. So there is no simple answer to your question when you're like, well I get back paid. It really just depends on when they determine your disabled once you get the data disability coupled with what kind of program you have, because if it's essa's side program, you only get from the date of the application. But if they found you disabled after the date of the application, guess what, They're not going to go back and pay you for that. So let's say they found you disabled today, but you apply

8:38 back in January, Well, they're not going to go It's well, they're not going to go back and pay you based on your application back in January. They're gonna pay you based on the date they found you disabled. All right. Medical source statement. Somebody asked, what is a medical source statement. A medical source statement is a statement written by your doctor indicating your condition. Basically, it can be anyway doctor writes it it. Basically, it can be a doctor's note that says, I'm doctor Johnson. I treat mister Smith. I've been treating him for the abast five years for his conditions related to COPD, high pretension, diabetes, and as well as his lumbar problem. It is in my opinion that his condition renders him disabled. Now here's the problem that

9:17 most people have. A lot of people think that when they get a medical source statement, it's a slam dump. They're gonna win because the doctors said the disabled. Remember, the final decision regarding disability is in the hands of the Commissioner's Social Security Administration another word, social Security has to make that determination. Now, is the doctor's statement helpful.

9:37 It is if it's supported by all the of the medical evidence. I talked about this in another video. If your doctor says that you're disabled, but every other doctor says that you're not, guess what's gonna happen. That's where you have a problem. If you've got like five treating doctors and they all say you're not disabled, but this one primary says that you are well. Then guess what the four of those doctors medical records, especially if they've been treating you for the same types of conditions. It's probably going to weigh heavily against that one doctor, But it is helpful to your case if the other evidence supports it. Now here's where another question that comes into play.

10:13 What happens if you're in a situation where you want to copy of your file to see if it's there, but you can't see it. What do you do. Here's what I tell people all the time. Be mindful. Social Security will not let you have access to your file until it goes to the hearing level. At the lower office level, it's shipping between different offices to work up your case, so they don't have the ability to stop and give you what they have. When you get your file, it is very possible that there's going to be documents in your file that is not there. Do not freak, do not get mad. That's just the nature of the beast.

10:49 Whatever is not there, you just get what they're missing so that when you go before you judge that the file is complete. Just because they didn't have everything doesn't mean it's going to kill your case. And oh, let me throw out a little tiboit to my people out here. Number love for you don't dwell on the fact that they didn't have it. I can't tell you the number of times I've had clients who are going off because they could have found me disabled, could have would have shut it. You can't worry about that now. If you're still in the appeals process and you're going for disability, focus on making sure that the decision maker, which the judge is at this point in time, has everything. Now you know what they're missing because remember Social Security only

11:26 pays up to fourteen dollars for medical records, so that's one thing. Second of all, you don't know what happened when they were asking for them. You don't know if maybe they didn't get the release, maybe the doctor said I'm not gonna give it to you. Because if your doctor has like two hundred pages worth of records and they're trying to charge Social Security two hundred dollars, guess what, They're not going to get your whole file. So read, I'm now get your file up to date and roll from there. All right, Okay, last two questions. Someone asked me about handling Asperger syndromes and what is the general outcome of those cases of those claims? Hi, good question.

12:00 I tell people all the time, don't focus on your disability based on your type of condition, meaning every condition is different. It just depends on the severity of the case and what's going on. Let me give you a good example diabetes. A lot of people have diabetes, So don't say, well, what's the how come of diabetes cases?

12:20 Guess what? If you're just taking glucafaged pills and you don't have any problems with diabetes, you're probably not going to be going to get disability as compared to someone who's taking insulin shots and has diabetic neuropathy and burning and sensation in their feet and in their hands and retinopathy in their eyes. Two different types of level of severity, So keep that in mind. And then finally, with regards to student loans, I've heard the student loans can be forgiven if the person is considered disabled. If so, I'd like clarification on the matter. I encourage everyone to speak to an attorney dealing with basically at basically debt forgiveness, which is usually for bankruptcy attorneys or social security attorney

13:00 doesn't matter. Here's where the kicker comes in. I talked about this with regards to loans. This is where it becomes a little tricky. Keep this in the back of your mind. Student loans can be discharged for purposes of bankruptcy only if you can show its undue hardship for you to have to continue to pay them. But there's a lot of different burdens that you have to meet.

13:23 In every federal district is there's a little different in terms of how they interpret it. Also, remember federal loans, as I talked before, can be garnished. They can be garnished from your check. Remember I talked about that in detail. However, if you're looking to have them, except because some debts, there's no a process, but you can actually put an application for undue hardship. Keep that in the back of your mind. I hope that helps you out. Everyone. I know this, I've gone through a lot. If you need me to have a special video, you know what to do.

13:52 Send me a message and I'm right here for you. Again. I have a wonderful day. Stay out of trouble. And take care to detect defect to the tectods to insist the effect of this prospectods to incest the effect of this provinces to expectors to infect the defect of this expect