Thursday, September 04, 2008

I am clearly disabled for SSDI why was I denied?

What factors other than your medical condition and how it limits you affect whether or not you win your Social Security disability case? Some people make the wrong assumption that because they have a disability and medical evidence to prove it that this automatically means they will win their Social Security disability benefits. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The person who decide your case at Social Security can be as important as the disability and evidence itself. This may not be fair, but it is humans who ultimately decide whether or not you win or lose your social security disability claim. Some of these decision makers are favorable to claimants and others are not. You have no control over who decide your case. So you might be wondering, why I even mention this if you have no control over it? The reason I mention it is to keep you from being discouraged if you get an unfavorable decision. Social security has an extensive appeal process. So, even if you are denied you will have many additional opportunities to win your claim. If you know you are disabled and have the evidence to prove it then you should keep appealing. Each new appeal will be decided by a different person and your luck may change. Now I cannot say that some people who are clearly disabled have not lost all their appeals. However, chances are if you are disabled and have the evidence that shows you are disabled you will eventually have a good chance to win your claim. You should not ignore the fact that you have been denied you should look at it as a wake-up call to take additional steps to give yourself the best chance to win on appeal. If you have been denied and you do not have a lawyer you should definitely consider getting one at this point. The reason I say this is because even though you have other appeals you do not want to waste these opportunities to win. As I've mentioned earlier, it may just be the person deciding your claim but it could also be something you are missing. If you are denied you may also want to ask yourself whether you know what you have to prove to win your case. You must understand how the decision-maker at Social Security determines if you are disabled. If you know the process the decision maker goes through to determine if you are disabled you may learn what you have been missing about your particular case. You can then take steps to improve your claim.