The Social Security Administration (SSA) has made a lot of changes to its disability compensation scheme since the definition of disability changed.
From this week on, the SSA will look at disabled people in a different way to see if they meet the program’s standards for disabilities. The choice was made after it was found that people with disabilities could not easily get some jobs in the American job market.
People with disabilities who already get Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits or who want to start getting disability benefits should read this because it could have a big effect on their chances of being accepted into the SSDI program.
The disability definition has changed for the disability payments program in the United States
Before this year, the Social Security Administration said that someone was disabled if they were unable to do any substantial gainful activity (SGA) because of a medically proven physical or mental disability that would either kill them or have been going on for at least 12 months.
As was already said, though, the government office said it would change this classification after finding 114 jobs with low job prospects. These jobs include those for models, astronomers, and agricultural engineers.
After these results were released, the government office said that these jobs will not be considered when deciding who is eligible for disability benefits.
In addition, the group found 13 jobs where judges have raised concerns about the health of workers who are labeled as “not disabled.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) also said that when deciding whether a benefit application is valid as “not disabled,” it must check to see if there are enough jobs available for those people.
Commissioner of Social Security Martin O’Malley says it makes sense to find jobs that are not in high demand in the business right now.
Because of this change, our decision-makers will no longer use these jobs as an excuse to turn down disability benefits applications.
Social Security wants to be more effective at reviewing disability benefits claims
Changing the definition of disability is likely to make the process for figuring out who is eligible for disability payments better. Because of this change, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will be able to look at disability worker cases with more detail.
The federal body also said that when deciding whether or not a person applying for disability benefits can work in other roles, it will only look at the most relevant jobs.
In the long run, Social Security will keep looking at data from the Occupational Requirements Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to help decide what changes should be made.
In May, the government paid Social Security payments to 7.23 million disabled workers. This was 20,000 less than the month before. On average, the government paid workers a little more than $1,500 a month.
The Social Security Administration says that the agency gave out a little more than $11 million during the month.
Newsweek reports that Burt Williamson, PlanPrep’s retirement expert, recently said that the lower number of disabled workers asking for benefits from the company could be due to a number of things.
He also said that he was not sure, but he thought it might be because people were dying, switching from disability benefits to retirement benefits, or losing their registration for benefits. But remember that this is just a guess that the retirement expert has made.
