Trying to explain to clients how difficult it can be reaching Social Security to apply for benefits or to just get some answers does not always crystallize just how high the mountain is to climb, but usually after a client makes an attempt, or several, of trying to visit a Social Security office or tries to call and reach someone by phone at Social Security, clients have a better understanding.
Conveying this message to the masses is difficult, but Laura Kwerel of The Atlantic wrote an article June 12 that does a pretty good job of explaining “the hell” as she calls it of applying for Social Security benefits in a firsthand experience.
Kwerel recently attempted to apply for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for her daughter who was born three months early, was extremely premature and spent 10 weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
As a Social Security disability law office we fight Social Security on disability rulings because it is very difficult to meet medical standards of Social Security disability, but Kwerel’s difficulty wasn’t with trying to prove that her daughter was disabled, according to Social Security’s own rules, she was. The difficulty came in the realm of “technical rules” and the utter lack of getting a straight answer mainly due to the massive understaffing at Social Security.
Ultimately, Kwerel’s article explains that after countless visits to her local Social Security office and numerous failed attempts of reaching a live person by phone at Social Security, she was informed that the “technical rules” were not met for SSI after calling Social Security’s press office as a journalist. This too is disturbing because, at least according to her article, it looks like she was given the wrong information by the press office. They informed that SSI is only available to couples with household resources under $3,000. This is correct if one of the adults is applying for SSI, but not when the couple is applying for SSI for a child. The $3,000 amount for adults is total resource of all income and assets, but SSI for children only considers monthly income of the parents. In 2016 that income limit for all earned income was $3,791 for two-income households with no other children in the family. The income limitations increase significantly if there are more children in the household.
At the end of the day, not knowing what Kwerel or her husband makes on a monthly basis, their child may still be ineligible for SSI due to income limits, but after all the hoops she had to jump through it appears that Kwerel was still given the wrong information on her child’s eligibility.
