The saga continues for the disabled from The Commercial Appeal.

Another backlog story from Kansas City.

Maybe this article at MSNBC can help.

I don’t offer tax advice, but I found the article informative.

Charles Hall has posted $250 Stimulus Payment Questions And Answers on his well written blog.

Taken from IRS Publication IR-2008-65, April 23, 2008:

“Even though April 15 has passed, the Internal Revenue Service today reminded retirees, disabled veterans and others who normally do not file a tax return that there is still time to submit a 2007 form to receive an economic stimulus payment.”

“People who have no tax filing requirement but have at least $3,000 in qualifying income should file a simple Form 1040A. Qualifying income includes any combination of earned income, nontaxable combat pay as well as certain payments from Social Security, Veterans Affairs and Railroad Retirement.”

“The types of Social Security benefits that are considered qualifying income include retirement, disability and survivor payments. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is not qualifying income. The types of Veterans Affairs benefits that are considered qualifying income include disability compensation, disability pension and survivor payments. Qualifying Railroad Retirement payments include the social security equivalent portion of Tier 1 benefits.”

Read the full IRS publication “Retirees, Disabled Vets Still Can File for 2008 Stimulus Payments,” to see if you qualify for the stimulus payments and find out how to file for it.

Another sad piece abouth Social Security’s claim processing backlog from the Ashville Citizen Times.

If your condition does not meet one of the Medical Listings that we discussed last time, SSA moves to step 4 of the sequential evaluation process.  Here, SSA must determine whether you are capable of performing your past work.  In considering past work, SSA only looks at the work that you performed in the past 15 years.  In essence, SSA is concerned with the easiest job that you performed in the past 15 years.  If, despite your impairments, you are capable of performing that job, then SSA will determine that you are not disabled.

In order to determine whether you are capable of performing any of your past work, SSA must make an assessment of what is known as your Residual Functional Capacity.  Your RFC is what you can still do despite your impairments.

How is my RFC determined?  Only the SSA decision maker can assess your RFC, but in doing so he must consider your medical evidence, your statements about your limitations, and any opinions provided by your doctors about your limitations.

How is my RFC used to determine whether I can perform my past work?  Well, SSA categorizes jobs as sedentary, light, heavy, and very heavy.  Each category has an exertional functional capacity requirement.  To perform a particular job, you must be able to perform the exertional requirements for that job.  For example, if your easiest job in the past 15 years is categorized as light, you must have the ability to lift 20lbs occasionally, 10lbs frequently, and to stand or walk most of an 8 hour work day to perform that job.

What if my easiest job required me to do more than the way SSA categorizes it?  It doesn’t matter.  SSA is only concerned with whether you have the RFC to perform the job as it is ordinarily done.  But, if your past work was actually easier than the SSA categories, then SSA will look at how you actually performed the job to see if your RFC will allow you to perform it again.  Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

If I can’t perform my past work, will I be found disabled?  Not necessarily.  If you can perform your past work, you won’t be found disabled.  If you can’t, the evaluation moves to the final step of disability determination, which is a determination of whether you can perform any other work that exists in significant numbers in the national economy.

Continuing with my discussion of the SSA disability evaluation process, today I am going to talk about Step 3, the Listing of Impairments.

Social Security’s Listings of Impairments is exactly what the name implies.  It is a list of severe conditions that contains criteria for medical signs, findings and symptoms.  If your medical condition meets these criteria then you are found disabled at this step and the analysis stops.  However, proof that your condition satisfies the criteria can be difficult to establish.  Objective medical records from your treating doctors are critical to be successful at this step.  The Listing criteria are very specific and require a relatively high level of severity.  Your medical records must contain the exact information required by the Listing, or demonstrate an equivalency to the required information.  Because of the specificity requirements of the medical evidence and because of the severity level that must be established by the evidence, many claimants who have been diagnosed with a condition named in the Listings will not be found disabled at this step.  This is often because of poor records keeping by your medical providers or because your condition has not yet advanced to the level required by the Listings for presumptive disability.

Don’t be discouraged, though.  The Listing step is unique.  If you can’t prove that your condition meets the requirements of the Listings, the evaluation does not stop at this step and it does not mean that Social Security will not find you disabled.  You still get to move on to step 4 of the evaluation.  We’ll talk about that in SSA Disability Basics Part 5.

If you want to see what conditions are covered in the Listings and how complicated the criteria are, you can take a look at them here.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Hartup

I’m going to take a break today from my discussion of SSA basics due to time constraints with my hearing schedule, but here is a good article on the current SSA case backlog.

Clients are often frustrated by the time it takes for their case to reach a conclusion.  In West Tennessee, claims generally take 483 days to process in Memphis and 568 days in Nashville once they reach the hearing stage due to the government’s case backlog.  As you can see from the article, the waiting time is much longer in other parts of the country.  While an attorney can certainly increase the odds of a favorable decision, there is very little that he or she can do to speed up the process.  Unfortunately, it appears that the backlog will only get worse with the “Baby Boomer” generation getting older.

It truly saddens me to see disabled people lose everything they have worked for while waiting to receive benefits that they are entitled to.  Though it is probably little comfort to you if you are one of the millions waiting, you are not alone.

Once it is determined that a social security disability claimant is not engaged in substantial gainful activity, the next step in the claims analysis is to determine whether the individual suffers from a “severe impairment.”

SSA defines a “severe impairment” as any impairment or combination of impairments which significantly limits your physical or mental ability to do basic work activities.  An impairment significantly limits an individual’s ability to do basic work activities when it has more than a minimal impact on the individual’s ability to perform these basic work activities.  The impairment must be medically determinable, meaning you must provide evidence in the form of medical records or tests to prove the existence of the impairment.

Generally speaking, this is not a difficult test for SSA claimant’s to pass, but you’ve got to have that medical evidence to establish the existence of the impairment.

Tomorrow, we will talk about which severe impairments SSA considers to be disabling at step three of the process without considering whether you are capable of performing your past work.