Disability Review: Fill & Download for Free

You are on social security disability and at age 61 you have been on it for 4 years. Full retirement age for you is about age 67. As a disability beneficiary, you are receiving the equivalent of a full retirement benefit. If you remain on disability to your full retirement age, your benefits will continue coming at the same rate including all the cost of living increases received during the interim. A bookkeeping change occurs behind the scenes so that the origins of your benefits are changed from the Disability Trust Fund to the Retirement Trust Fund.Can you lose your disability benefits at your age? It is theoretically possible, depending on a number of factors. All disability beneficiaries must undergo a continuing disability review periodically. This review process has varying periods of time intervals that depends on the likelihood of medical improvement in your case. You may have already undergone one, or are undergoing one now.In my career, I performed an initial screening of over 10,000 of these disability review cases. Things may have changed a lot in the ensuing 9 years. Back then if we found a case marked as “Medical Improvement Not Expected” and the disability found was appropriate for that category, the review was completed and a continuance decision was processed. That screening also processed continuances on cases that would attain age 65 within a year of the screening. With the current Administration’s attempts to remove more beneficiaries sooner that usual, these guidelines may very well change.So if you are contacted by SSA to undergo a continuing disability review, respond promptly and completely. There were significant backlogs of these cases when I retired, at all levels of the process. I saw cases returned as continuances 2 years after the paperwork was filed because the beneficiary had attained age 65 in the interim.With the Administration simultaneously increasing the workloads and decreasing the budget to accomplish those workloads, I expect backlogs to mushroom.

Hello!I don’t know in what particular situation you’re in. But I do know this.There has to be public awareness and outrage over a little-noticed Trump administration proposal that could strip life-saving disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people by further complicating the way the Social Security Administration determines who is eligible for payments.The proposed rule change was first published in the Federal Register last month but has received scarce attention in the national media. Last week, the Social Security Administration extended the public comment period on the proposal until January 31, 2020. See for yourself, here’s the link: Rules Regarding the Frequency and Notice of Continuing Disability ReviewsThe Trump administration is attacking another vulnerable population: those who are disabled and receiving Social Security Disability benefits," tweeted patient advocate Peter Morley, who lobbies Congress on healthcare issues. "This is a national disgrace.”The proposed Trump Administration rule would throw 100K's off SSDI & SSI, which would ALSO mean Medicare and Medicaid respectively for those recipients.The process for receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is already notoriously complicated, and the Trump administration is attempting to add yet another layer of complexity that critics say is aimed at slashing people's benefits.As The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week, "those already receiving disability benefits are subject to so-called continuing disability reviews, which determine whether they are still deserving of compensation for an injury, illness, or other incapacitating problem as their lives progress."Currently, beneficiaries are placed in three separate categories based on the severity of their disability: "Medical Improvement Not Expected," "Medical Improvement Expected," and "Medical Improvement Possible." People with more severe medical conditions face less frequent disability reviews. Here’s the link to that story: Trump administration proposes Social Security rule changes that could cut off thousands of disabled recipientsThe Trump administration's proposed rule would another category called "Medical Improvement Likely," which would subject beneficiaries to disability reviews every two years.According to the Inquirer, "an estimated 4.4 million beneficiaries would be included in that designation, many of them children and so-called Step 5 recipients, an internal Social Security classification."Step 5 recipients, the Inquirer noted, "are typically 50 to 65 years of age, in poor health, without much education or many job skills [and] often suffer from maladies such as debilitating back pain, depression, a herniated disc, or schizophrenia."Jennifer Burdick, supervising attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, said placing Step 5 recipients in the new "Medical Improvement Likely" category and subjecting them to reviews every two years would represent "a radical departure from past practice."Kate Lang, senior attorney at the non-profit group Justice in Aging, told the Inquirer that the Trump administration is "out to shrink the rolls.""And they're setting people up to not comply," said Lang.In addition to lack of coverage from the national media, most members of Congress have also been relatively quiet about the Trump administration's proposal.Two Pennsylvania Democrats—Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Brendan Boyle—condemned the proposed rule change in statements to the Inquirer.The proposal, said Casey, "appears to be yet another attempt by the Trump administration to make it more difficult for people with disabilities to receive benefits."Boyle said the "changes seem arbitrary, concocted with no evidence or data to justify such consequential modifications.""This seems like the next iteration of the Trump administration's continued efforts to gut Social Security benefits," Boyle added. jake (@johnsonjakep) | Twitter

Because our government, in its wisdom, thinks that somehow, suddenly, after all these years (or our whole lives), we’re going to become hearing or gain vision or start walking or whatever.Ridiculous.