If the effects of diabetes leave you unable to keep working, Social Security Disability benefits could give you a major break.
Benefits provide monthly income and access to health care through Medicare or Medicaid. When you’re under financial stress from health problems and job loss, Social Security Disability gives you a stronger foundation for taking care of yourself and your needs.
But like diabetes itself, getting Social Security Disability for diabetes is complicated. Denials are extremely common.
About 10.7 percent of all adults in New York State—1.7 million people—have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. And 34 million adults have it nationally, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Millions manage it and live their lives mostly uninterrupted. Others face serious limitations. Diabetes affects multiple parts of the body, showing itself in multiple ways. Applying for disability benefits with diabetes requires a certain approach.
You may need help from an experienced Social Security Disability lawyer, like those at Lachman & Gorton Law Office. Lachman & Gorton has been helping people in Elmira, Binghamton, Rochester, and across Upstate New York for over four decades.
Read further to get an idea of what it takes to make a claim for disability benefits for diabetes. Or to talk about your own situation, get in touch with us.
To qualify for Social Security Disability benefits, you must prove you’re unable to work.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) recognizes diabetes as a possible cause of such a work-stopping disability.
But it stopped listing diabetes as its own impairment for the purposes of awarding disability benefits. Social Security noted that medical advances in treating diabetes have made it more manageable for many people.
That means to qualify for Social Security Disability benefits with diabetes—because your case is severe enough to rule out working—you’ll need to document seriously limiting effects from other, related medical conditions.
These are some of the health problems you can show in your diabetes claim:
A Social Security Disability lawyer will know how to structure your application for disability benefits, considering diabetes and any other medical conditions you have, to give you the best possible chance of being approved.
You don’t have to wonder about your disability case. You can talk about it with the Lachman & Gorton disability law firm, serving Endicott, Binghamton, Elmira, Oneonta, Rochester, and all communities in Upstate New York.
Your initial claim evaluation comes without any costs or obligations.
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Social Security laid out a process for deciding whether adults with diabetes can get economic relief from disability benefits.
They’ll filter your diabetes disability claim through these questions:
If you can work a basic amount, which Social Security calls “substantial gainful activity,” it will deny your benefits.
This has to be an impairment backed up by medical records and evidence that seriously limits your physical or mental ability to perform work.
This is where Social Security checks for medical conditions related to diabetes like the ones listed above and others.
Social Security will make a measurement of what you’re able to do on a daily basis despite your health problems, which it calls your “residual functional capacity” (RFC).
One of the top reasons to work with a disability lawyer is to have them handle this process for you, which is easier, less stressful, and can help you avoid mistakes that may hurt your disability claim.
And when you can’t work and money is tight, getting a disability lawyer is low-risk for you, because you don’t pay a lawyer fee until you win benefits.
Even when you’re approved for benefits, your disability attorney’s fee comes out of a lump sum of back benefits that Social Security awards, not your pocket or your monthly disability checks.
When diabetes is limiting your everyday life, making a claim for disability benefits requires special care because of the way Social Security approaches this disorder.
Talk to the disability lawyers at Lachman & Gorton for help, and hope of a more secure, stable, calm life.