Jackson Jambalaya

Is obesity a disability?

I saw a 21-year-old male as a patient and noticed he was on SSI. I asked him what his disabilty was and he said "my feet". I asked what was wrong with them and he said he was born with club feet. This had been corrected surgically shortly after birth and he has been walking without problems for 20 years but he's still on SSI.

ANd beleive it or not, Mississippi is one of the least lenient in allowing applications for diability payments. MS processes approximately 78,000 claims a year and only allows 25% of them.

THe culprit in this scheme are the admistirative law jusdges who hear SSA and SSI appeals. THe initial and reconsideration appeals are handled by trained disability claims adjudicators and bound by hundreds of little bitty laws in promulgated by SSA as regulations.

THe next level of appeal is the ALJ, who is not bound by the same regulations the adjudicators are; they go by the broad guidelines set out in the law as congress passes it.

Guess what their allowance rate is?

90% of all ALJ cases result in an allowance. That's the broken link, and it needs to be fixed.

Anderson,

Yes, obesity is a disability when linked with other conditions such as high blood pressure, joint problems, and a few other comorbid impariments.

So the lesson is keep on appealing and your cow will eventually come home?

Ahhhh. The Southeastern Conference states.

Apparently, as learned in the Republican primary for Ag Commish, disabled means that you can no longer perform the job you used to have -- not that you can't work.

Easy now, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

I am 64 and have had a disability since I was 2. Mosquito bite with encephalitis that settled on the motor control part of the brain.

I have worked all my life,with major US companies, lived all over this country, never took a dime from anyone. Until last year when it was just to difficult to work.

Filled out the paper work and yes, in 60 days without a lawyer was approved. Now next year it moves from diability to retirement.

All pots and kettles are not black.

To expand upon what Schizo states, the doctors at Social Security approve payment of very few claims anyway, so it is a surprise to me that the officials complained to them about the problem. SSA docs are very stingy about approvals. So, yes, the ALJ level is where it gets much easier for claimants to be successful. All of those judges have different statistics on approvals, which can range from the mid twenty to the low ninety percentage. I may be incorrect and Schizo may be correct, but I always heard that the national average was 60 to 70%.

10:37 the guy born with the club foot may also have had an IQ of 60.

People with disabilities can LOOK normal and sound OK.

Indeed 8% of children in the US are BORN with disabilities so 7.6% stops being such a high figure,doesn't it?The children can't CON anyone about their classification.

Then we have 1% that develop schizophrenia.Indeed, 20%-26% of OUR population reports symptoms of mental illness which isn't hard to believe when one reads political polls. Another 9% of our population has an IQ below 80 and now 1 in every 125
children born austistic ( that's luckily 1/317 in MS, in some states 1 in every 67-99 children are born with autism so makes you wonder why the state rates vary so widely doesn't it? Could we be poisoning fetuses in utero?)

People born with some of these disabiliites are either made fun of, bullied,abused by their parents who have unrealistic expections,or are gullible. So then we wonder WHY we have addicts and criminals and homeless people.

We aren't all born equally fit and talented, we are born with equal opportunities. And, we are complaining about the wrong thing. Instead of complaining about entitlements we should ask why an increasing number of our population would qualify for entitlements.

We don't ask because the answers might be very inconvenient but it's kinda ugly that we are so hard assed and judgmental towards the disabled . It's more than a little hypocritical when we are against abortion but uninterested in making sure that baby is born healthy with a shot at life.

We might ought to be thankful today especially that we came into this world healthy and with , at least an average of 90 IQ and especially thankful if we are in the 16.1% who are bright/normal and really thankful if we are in the 8.9% of superior intelligence ( which starts at 120 which USE to be the minimum of college graduates).

When you consider that an Administrative Law Judge for these hearings, or those hearing appeals with the Employment Security Department must have zero credentials, who can express surprise at the rulings.

How the words 'administrative', 'law' or 'judge' are applicable is anybody's guess.

It would be more appropriate to simply call them what they are... "Claimant Advocate". The word 'General' could be added to make them feel more useful.